The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

I wonder if Poizner thinks alcoholics are “really bad people” -- or just people who need a 12-step program.

What is a “really bad person” anyway? Are the many of you who have done some stupid things in your past but just didn’t get caught “really bad people” too? Or does the stereotype apply only to people in prison?

I’m opposed to the early releases of people who are dangerous, also. But how does one determine who’s dangerous? Is the 80-year-old infirm man in a wheelchair a danger? Let’s be honest -- who doesn’t have the capacity to be dangerous? Prisoner or not?

Poizner says this is no way to balance the budget. But what about the consequences of cutting even more money from other services? (See my most recent blog here.
Has he considered that the industrialization of prisons in California with the three strikes, archaic laws and sentencing, is no way to create jobs?

The other Republican gubernatorial candidate, Meg Whitman, said “the most important role government has is public safety. It’s very important to be consistent.” She’s also opposed to early releases and prison reform. Odd that the former CEO of Ebay is so short sighted about the long-term effects of the current budget and prison situation. Isn’t this a women who had to please stockholders and a board of directors and had to have insightful long-term visions planning Ebay strategy -- which she did quite successfully? I guess your strategy changes drastically when you’re selling a service as opposed to selling fear.

The only things consistent about California prison policy are lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key strategies. Most politicians are also consistently spouting tough-on-crime policy against their better judgment because they are consistently afraid of the Willie Horton syndrome.

A couple of gubernatorial candidates from the Democratic side are, amazingly, looking at prison reform as a way to alleviate some of California’s budget problems.

The biggest threat to public safety is not the people in prison or their releases (most of them are going to get out anyway). It’s consistently cutting money for health care, education, welfare and myriad other programs that help to create a brighter future for Californians. Public safety also means maintaining roads and bridges, supplying water, educating citizens etc. The best way to have public safety is to have an environment that creates hope, not antipathy.

Finally, the Canadian government is considering creating a prison system similar to California’s -- and a rather scathing indictment came out from opponents who say doing so is a bad idea.

The majority of first world countries see California and its prison policies as insane -- why can’t we see that for ourselves? It’s like we have “prison addiction.”

I wonder if people with prison addiction should be consistently labeled “really bad people.” The rest of the world seems to think so.
http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2009/09/prison_report_who_are_the_bad.html

Here's an article about the Canadian proposal referred to in the article above...

Tory plans for U.S.-style prisons slammed in report
Last Updated: Thursday, September 24, 2009
CBC News

The Conservative government plans to bring in an American-style prison system that will cost billions of taxpayer dollars and do little to improve public safety, according to a report released Thursday in Ottawa.

"It tramples human rights and human dignity," University of British Columbia law professor Michael Jackson, co-author of the 235-page report, titled A Flawed Compass, told reporters.

Moreover, there is "a near total absence of evidence" in the government plan that its measures will "return people to the community better able to live law-abiding lives," said co-author Graham Stewart, who recently retired after decades as head of the John Howard Society of Canada.

Their report provides a scathing review of a government blueprint for corrections called A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety. A panel led by Rob Sampson, a former corrections minister in Ontario ex-premier Mike Harris's Tory government, drafted the plan, which is being implemented by the Correctional Service.

In addition to constructing super prisons and implementing work programs, the program will eliminate gradual release and deny inmates rights that are now entrenched in the Constitution.

However, Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan said the plan is not based on a U.S.-style prison system at all. "I don't know where that suggestion comes from," he told CBC News in an interview.

"We don't have a capital program for creating and building new prisons right now, so attacking the government is a little odd."

Rather, "the changes we're proposing [are] to improve our system, protect society more and make sure offenders get the help they need," particularly mental illness treatment, Van Loan said.

The government wants to create an incentive system for prisoners to participate in rehabilitation programs, "because that's important for not just the safety of society, which is … the most important principle, but also for the prisoner to integrate into the community ultimately," he said.

The current practice of statutory release is the "wrong approach," he added.

"That means somebody has a nine-year sentence; at six years, even if they're not participating in their programs, they're automatically … released into society."

But Jackson said the plan undermines public safety by making prisons more dangerous places and constricting inmates' reintegration into society.

By keeping prisoners locked up longer, the plan places an enormous financial burden on taxpayers, he added.

Perhaps worst of all, Jackson said, it "will intensify what the Supreme Court has characterized as the already staggering injustice of the overrepresentation of aboriginal people in the prisons of Canada."
A recipe for prison violence: Jackson

By stressing punishment rather than rehabilitation, the plan ignores lessons of the past, which led to the prison riots and killings that dominated Canadian news in the early 1970s, Jackson said.

"My greatest fear is with this road map's agenda and its underlying philosophy, we will enter a new period of turmoil and violence in Canadian prisons," he said.

"I do fear that prisons will become more abusive, prisoners will become more frustrated and that we could go back to a time not only when the rule of law was absent but a culture of violence is the dominant way in which prisoners express their frustrations."

Stewart called the blueprint "an ideological rant, which flies in the face of the Correctional Service's own research of what works to rehabilitate prisoners and ensure community safety."

"The fact is that you cannot hurt a person and make them into a good citizen at the same time," Stewart said.

The government has already allocated hundreds of millions to the plan, even though it has had no input from either Parliament or the public, according to the report.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/09/24/conservative-prison-plan024.html