The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

With this plan, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has found a new way to deepen the crisis of an overcrowded, over-budgeted and revolving-door prison system, proving again that the state lacks the political will to shrink our huge and troubled prison system.
The department's Gender Responsive Strategies Commission recently identified at least 4,500 people it wants to release from the state's four women's prisons. Under its master plan, California would build or contract for an additional 4,500 beds in mini-prisons for these female inmates, calling it "release" and "community-based treatment." But that rhetoric ignores the fact that if 4,500 people don't belong in prison, then they belong at home.
The master plan is nothing new. It's not about reducing our prison population, which now stands at 170,000, or investing in social services that would help keep Californians out of prison. Under the guise of "gender responsiveness," the commissioners are seeking new prisons across the state to hold 4,500 people, which would free up an existing women's prison to hold thousands more male inmates. As is, this plan could increase the number of prisoners in California by thousands. History shows what prison expansion has done to California for almost 30 years: empty the taxpayers' pockets, break up families and starve essential services by diverting tax funds into guards' salaries, health-care costs and prison construction debt.
The department isn't providing services for drug treatment, vocational training, education, health care or the litany of other services required by women of color and poor people of all races in California's women's prisons, and there's no blueprint to do so under this plan. The governor reduced the department's programming and education budget for the 2006-2007 fiscal year because the department can't provide those services, even when the money is available.
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation fails to find alternatives to incarceration, and isn't seeking to close prisons and shift funds toward community-based re-entry programs, independent from the department. The idea that any prisoner would be better off in a privatized prison belies the evidence: private prisons are as violent as public lockups; they cost more to operate; and they create another layer of bureaucracy between prisoners and the decision-makers who control their access to health care, family, lawyers and programs.
We have a responsibility to tease out the good intentions this plan proclaims from the bad news it contains. As state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, quipped last month when the governor unveiled the budget revise, "We are not going to build ourselves out of this problem ... New prisons are not going to cut it."
What about shifting money out of the corrections department and into social-service agencies? We should send the 4,500 prisoners home to their communities with the resources earmarked for construction and operation of new prisons. That way, former prisoners can reunite with their families and seek education, job training, housing, employment and drug treatment as necessary.
Positive change often comes in small steps. But it won't come at all if
we
settle for steps backward. This plan distorts the meaning of "release." It would shift California's formidable prison construction machine into high speed, a path California should not go down again.
Assembly members Goldberg and Lieber both know better than to let the corrections department expand further. We need to take a closer look at AB2066 and the recommendations of the Gender Responsive Strategies Commission. Imprisoning people in new facilities and investing billions more in prison construction and operation is not a release plan. Making prison the place where the state provides education, drug treatment and employment assistance to the poor is no way to make Californians safer.

Cassandra Shaylor is the co-director and Ari Wohlfeiler is the campaign coordinator at Justice Now, a human-rights organization dedicated to stopping violence against women and ending imprisonment.
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Copyright 2006 SF Chronicle
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PRO
On Solutions for Prison Overcrowding
No more prisons or better prisons?
New small facilities offer a better future for female inmates
- Sally Lieber, Barbara Bloom
Friday, June 16, 2006
There is a historic effort under way today to provide women serving time in California's prisons with greater opportunities for success in life after their release, with a net benefit to these women, their families and society. If the political will is there, we have the chance to reduce severe overcrowding in our state prisons and break the intergenerational cycle of incarceration.
The plan is to move 4,500 low-level female offenders out of the large, centralized institutions where they are housed and into much smaller secure facilities in the communities they come from. Studies demonstrate that placing inmates in community-based programs dramatically reduces recidivism.

These women inmates are serving time for nonserious, nonviolent offenses -- with the overwhelming majority serving time for drug offenses or property crimes arising from drug use. They do not need high-security measures that cost taxpayers an average of $36,200 per inmate, per year. They do need meaningful services, including substance-abuse treatment and education, vocational training, mental-health treatment and health care -- all of which can be provided in the community at a higher quality and lower cost than in a state prison.
With all four of California's women's institutions situated in just two counties, thousands of women are inevitably housed far from their families and potential support networks. To be successfully rehabilitated, these inmates need contact with their families, with culturally-appropriate services and with potential employers -- in the communities they will return to after serving their time.
The value of placing women offenders closer to their families cannot be overstated. Seventy percent of women serving time in our state prisons are mothers of children 18 or younger. Programs already in place in our state -- though on a much smaller scale -- show an enormous rehabilitative benefit from family interaction. Women in community programs that provide comprehensive services and give them frequent contact with their children in a healthy environment re-offend at a rate of just 14 percent -- a sharp contrast with the typical rate of 46 percent.
The impact on children is no less dramatic. The data show that separation from mothers puts children at a higher risk of ending up in prison themselves. The chance to break the intergenerational cycle of incarceration is reason enough to move these women from their remote locations closer to the people who will motivate and support them.
For these reasons, we have introduced legislation that will create gender-specific strategies to address the needs of female inmates and, where appropriate, provide for the transition of women from large-scale prisons into smaller community facilities.
There is strong bipartisan support for these changes and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has included funding to accomplish this in his proposed budget for next year.
Critics of these plans argue that too many people are already in prison as a result of mandatory-sentencing laws and technical parole violations and that our state's focus should be on rolling back increases in sentencing. These trends have indeed put many more women behind bars than belong there, and we must address that.
However, our plan won't expand prisons; it will actually reduce the number of women in prison by decreasing the rate of recidivism. Shifting nonviolent, low-level female offenders from prisons to community facilities and commonsense sentencing reform are complementary, not mutually exclusive.

We cannot turn our backs on the opportunity to improve the lives of women inmates and their families, just because it doesn't go quite as far as some would like it to.
We should move forward together and reap the many benefits that this new approach to rehabilitation will provide.

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-San Jose, is assistant speaker pro tempore of the State Assembly and the author of AB2066. Barbara Bloom is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Sonoma State University. She is a past president of the Western Society of Criminology and a recipient of the 2003 WSC Fellow Award for important contributions to the field of criminology.
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