The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Although any vote on the issue by the county board of supervisors is months away, some observers predict the Agnews Developmental Center site in North San Jose and several properties near the county's main jail on Hedding Street could emerge as possible locations.
Crowding at the main jail and the Elmwood Correctional Complex in Milpitas make the idea at least worth considering, the county executive's office believes, given the financial incentives state officials are dangling to expand jails.
Supervisor Ken Yeager, however, isn't so sure.
"They will make this sound like a great deal to the counties," said Yeager, who sits on the supervisors' Public Safety and Justice Committee. "But we've had a long string of broken promises from the state."
Should supervisors warm to the idea, Santa Clara County could join more than a dozen others that have agreed to let the state build re-entry facilities within their borders. The facilities are like locked-down halfway houses for prisoners in their last 12 months of incarceration.
Born out of a recent state law, the idea is to bring up to 500 lower-risk inmates in each facility closer to where they will be released, and to start providing them services such as drug treatment and job assistance. The goal: to cut the state's eye-popping 70 percent rate of recidivism. Many ex-convicts land right back in prison for violating parole or committing new crimes.
The idea sounds like a winner to Andrew Ricondo.
During his recent eight-month stint in San Quentin Prison for violating parole, Ricondo said he hoped family and friends in San Jose could help with his financial troubles so he could keep his $750-a-month apartment. But it was too hard to communicate from the prison 60 miles away, he said, so he lost the apartment.
Recently released, Ricondo, a 28-year-old whose initial offense was selling drugs, now must find housing as well as a job. "I have to start all over," he said.
A likely candidate for a re-entry facility, Ricondo would have been closer to friends and family had such a center existed here. He says inmates he knew could have been fulfilling their drug treatment or other release conditions while still in prison.
"If you can get all that done in that year," he said, "that gets you more on the ball to get a job."
State corrections officials say they're planning to build the facilities in at least 32 counties, using $6 billion in bond money. They say they will pay for the ongoing services out of the state's budget - even though the facilities will cost two or three times the typical bill of $45,000 a prisoner per year.
"If you reduce the return rate by even 10 percent, the programs pay for themselves," said Joan Petersilia, a University of California-Irvine professor and consultant to the state on prison reform.
Among the issues that are likely to turn the proposal into a red-hot debate: Will the prisoners, once they are released, siphon already-burdened county resources from non-criminal residents? And what about the difficulties and delays that those on probation or parole already face getting services to re-enter society?
"One of the challenges we face in Santa Clara County, in my opinion, is we don't have sufficient resources for people who are placed on probation," Carr said.
Petersilia and others argue that opponents are being short-sighted, because released state prisoners are required to be sent back to their last county of residence - and must stay there for a mandated period, under a parole officer's supervision.
Proponents say it's better to get them after a year of focused treatment and contact with their families and local law enforcement, than having them sent home with no more than "$200, less the cost of a bus ticket."
The main reason the county is considering such a facility at all is that the state is offering incentives. Any county that agrees to let the state build one will get extra consideration for some of the $1.2 billion in state funds earmarked for expanding county jails. That's especially tempting, given that a federal court is now considering whether there needs to be a cap on the number of prisoners in state prisons - which would cause as many as 1,500 inmates a year to land back in Santa Clara County's lap.
The county's two primary jails already are operating at about 124 percent of state-recommended levels, with an average daily population of about 4,800 in both jails.
The biggest debate, most say, would be where to put the facility if the board of supervisors decides to allow it.
The ideal location, according to Petersilia, would be in an area close to public transportation, low-wage jobs and faith-based and other community service providers.
Supervisor Blanca Alvarado said it's not the county's job to ease the state's overcrowding problems.
As for re-entry centers, she said: "I still have very major concerns."