The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

As the state faces a chronic budget deficit of at least $8 billion for the fiscal year that begins July 1, paying off both prison bond packages would cost taxpayers more than $1.2 billion a year over the next quarter-century.
"This issue is not an elective," said Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer. "It is a directive. We are under a federal court order to bring the level of health care in our correctional system up to a constitutionally acceptable standard after years and years of under-investment. So in a sense, we are having to catch up for years where this was not adequately financed."
Administration officials and the prison medical care receiver, J. Clark Kelso, are scheduled to appear before a Senate budget subcommittee Monday to answer questions about the new funding request and how it squares with funding provided last year under Assembly Bill 900.
Kelso, who is operating under the authority of U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson, declined to forecast how he would react if the Legislature refuses to provide the money. Under the terms of his receivership, he could ask the judge to waive state procedures and order the funding on his own.
"I'll just play that as it goes," Kelso told reporters.
The new proposal seeks $6 billion in lease revenue bonds to build seven long-term chronic care facilities - not "hospitals," Kelso said - at existing prisons. They would provide space for 10,500 inmates.
His plan has not yet outlined specific locations for the facilities, but property adjacent to Sacramento County's two Folsom prisons was previously listed as a likely site.
Another $900 million in bond funds and $100 million in general fund revenues would pay to upgrade medical facilities at the state's 33 prisons.
Lease revenue bonds accounted for $7.4 billion of the funding contained in last year's AB 900 plan.
State Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, said the new request "seems startling," especially when combined with the expenditures under AB 900.
"They haven't given us a plan on how they plan to spend the $7.4 billion," Ducheny said. "Why would we want to double that and still not have a plan?"
"It will be an interesting hearing Monday," Ducheny added.
Administration officials have embraced for nearly two years the idea of using health care beds to help fix the state's prison overcrowding problem, where the vast majority of the state's 170,000 prisoners are living in 33 prisons crowded to nearly twice their designed capacity.
Expansion of prison health facilities also has long been proposed as a remedy for resolving the federal class-action cases pending in Sacramento and San Francisco. Judges in both cases found the system's mental and medical care to be constitutionally inadequate.
Plaintiffs' attorneys in the two class actions have since filed motions charging that overcrowding contributes to the constitutional shortcomings.

The motions are pending before a three-judge federal court that is considering imposing a prison population cap.
Michael Bien, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the mental health case, said there is "a serious, long-term need" to get the beds online.
"In terms of ending these cases, it's a necessary element to get these beds built," Bien said of the proposal by the administration and the receiver.
In providing details on the long-term care centers, Kelso said that 75 percent of the beds would be provided in open-dorm "sheltered living" settings and the other 25 percent will be of assisted-living and licensed nursing home quality.
Maximum- and medium-security inmates now living in single-bed prison cells would fill nearly 5,000 of the health care beds.
Kelso said their transfers should free up the equivalent of 7,500 beds through double-celling and thereby help reduce the overcrowding problem.
Kelso also said the new beds could be "repurposed" to house healthy prisoners if the system's medical needs wane.
He said that he has already retained one construction company to provide cost estimates and that he is looking for a "second opinion" on that subject. He said he intends to establish a "construction advisory Cabinet."
"My goal here is to do this as cost effectively as possible, not just spend the full amount that has been authorized," Kelso said.
Construction would begin in January and run through July 2013 if the Legislature approves, according to Kelso.