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April 17, 2007
CA: New prison beds for women rejected by legislative committee
CURB Press Release 4-17-07
New prison beds for women rejected
by legislative committee
SACRAMENTO- Plans to build thousands of new prison beds for women were rejected today when the Assembly Public Safety Committee rejected AB76, even after the bill's author, Assemblymember Sally Lieber (D-Mountain View), stripped thousands of new prison beds for women from the bill.
"This is a great victory for those locked in California's women's prisons and anyone who cares about real solutions to California's prison crisis," said Marina Sideris of Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), a statewide coalition who opposed the bill.
In January 2006, Gov. Schwarzenegger announced that the CDCR had identified 4,500 people in women's prisons who didn't need to be there. Instead of developing a plan to release them and provide transitional services, the CDCR proposed building 4,500 new beds in urban mini prisons, called Female Rehabilitative Community Corrections Centers.
"Building more prison cells isn't the answer to prison overcrowding. Building smaller prisons isn't the solution to having women in prison who don't need to be there " said Susan Burton of A New Way of Life from Los Angeles. "It is time to move our focus and our tax dollars away from prison construction and towards rehabilitative solutions."
"A truly 'gender responsive' policy would start by discharging the 4,500 people the CDCR identified as no longer needing to be in prison," said Vanessa Huang of Justice Now. "It's fiscally irresponsible to spend taxpayer dollars to expand a system that's devastated families across the state. Instead of wasting money locking up more Californians, we should be investing in the public resources independent of the criminal legal system that women and transgender people need to keep our families and communities whole and intact."
The defeat of AB 76 also spelled the end of plans to institute a "Female Offender Reform Master Plan," which had also concerned many advocates. "Leaving thousands locked up in Chowchilla after the CDCR has determined they don't need to be there isn't the answer. The Legislature needs to find ways to get people back to their children, back to their communities, and out of prison," said John Lum of CURB. "We urge the Legislature to lead us in the right direction by ensuring that prisons are not the only place where Californians can receive services."
Shachie Day, a woman currently imprisoned at Central California Women's Facility, said this is a crucial opportunity for legislators to both enable "more free world staff providing services like counseling and job training that is actually useful for finding work on the outside" and "build more sober living homes, rather than small prisons. Sure, these services would take money. But they're a lot cheaper than the economic and social costs of prison expansion."
Posted by lois at April 17, 2007 11:44 PM