California Pays the Price for Shortsighted Prison Policy
You may have seen that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld decisions of the lower federal courts ordering California to reduce the number of prisoners it holds to 137.5% of capacity, and to do so within two years. Right now, California has 154,000 prisoners in a system designed for 80,000 — and this is not a temporary condition. As the decision Brown v. Plata (2011) points out, California has been operating at 200% of its capacity for eleven years. The courts have repeatedly told California that it either needs more prisons or less prisoners — and California’s legislature seems unwilling to do anything about this.
Prisons are not supposed to be summer camp. They are places where we lock people up because they are unwilling or unable to follow the rules of civilized society. (Complicating this is that some prisoners are a major threat to other prisoners. While California Democrats like to joke about prison rape of those that they don’t like, decent people recognize that there is an obligation to protect prisoners from other prisoners.) There is a point where the circumstances are so shocking that even those who are hardliners about punishing violent crime recoil in horror.
Appendix B of Brown v. Plata contains shocking pictures of gymnasiums crammed with bunk beds where prisoners sleep. For a long time, we have recognized that circumstances like this make rape almost unavoidable, because the most brutal of felons have access to the weakest.
Because there are not enough facilities for mentally ill inmates, “suicidal inmates may be held for prolonged periods in telephone-booth sized cages without toilets.” In some cases, inmates have been held in such cages “for nearly 24 hours, standing in a pool of his own urine, unresponsive and nearly catatonic.”
Inmates are sometimes “held for months in administrative segregation.” (“Administrative segregation” means solitary.) Suicide rates are extremely high; “80% higher than the national average” for prisons.
California’s legislature knows that there is a problem, so why isn’t anything being done? Are California Democrats (who control both houses of the legislature) that hostile to raising taxes and spending money? Two years ago, then-California Attorney General Jerry Brown complained about what he called “an extravagant spending proposal for prison medical facilities.” The court-appointed receiver demanded that the state’s new prison medical facility include “regulation-size basketball courts, electronic bingo boards, music and art therapy rooms, and landscaping to hide fences.” Oh yes, and “yoga rooms and horticulture therapy.” Brown pointed out that all of this is “well beyond what is required by the Eighth Amendment” (the one that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment). It sounds like California might not be allowed to expand its prisons except by building something close to a luxury resort.
Isn’t it great to see the ACLU AND the liberal Democrats in the California legislature going after each other? It’s a pity that only one of them can lose. Well, if you want to find some adult supervision in California, you’re out of luck. Remember, this is the same state that just re-elected Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi. And now Jerry Brown is Governor. There really is no hope for that state. None at all.
Oh, I bet they assume they’ll both win, by forcing tax increases on reluctant voters. “Court said…”
But tax increases won’t produce more revenue. They will actually both lose, and so will every decent person still in CA. It’s a horrible tragedy, what’s happened.
Bad-faith politics deserves punishment.
They need to pass legislation to allow prisoners to be contracted into privately run prisons out of state…say AZ where a Sheriff Joe desert camp and chain gang in pink underwear can be utilized to build the fence Brewer is planning. This can be a great industry in an otherwise non-productive area of the state. This would be staffed entirely by veterans used to handling the trash in Iraq.
The legislation is needed because some airhead judge in Sacramento decided this was somehow illegal…while of course releasing 40K felons would be more acceptable.
A great start would be deportation of all the illegals and their families …unfortunately these numbers are not available but estimates are up to 30% of the prison population (probably inflated).
Privately run prisons create their own set of lawsuits and problems.
Deporting illegal alien prisoners is effectively releasing them, since we do not have a border with Mexico.
Agree that privately run prisons bring lawsuits and problems…is that any different than state prisons? Premature release of violent felons is not one of the problems. Chain gangs and deserts do become a deterrent as undoubtedly would a camp near Point Barrow, Alaska.
Illegals being deported is effective if the next stop on another illegal return is one of those camps for life.
A further solution is a camp for aged prisoners…essentially a glorified nursing home. There is no reason to continue to house 75 year old lifers, but no reason to free them either.
I read a study a while back that hard prisons make harder criminals. I don’t know if the study was any good. One must also keep in mind that from time to time the innocent get convicted.
We may treat them like cattle – but we are dealing with humans here.
And a study of criminals might be in order. My take is that most of the males would be victims of child abuse – that does not absolve the criminals of their crimes. It does tell us what to do to reduce crime. Do something about child abuse.
And then there is the drug war. The majority (vast majority?) of female heroin users were sexually assaulted as children.
Heroin
California doesn’t have a border with Mexico? News to me.
I’ll point of that Sheiff Joe has problems of his own with providing inmates adequate medical care.
Interesting. Mr. Cramer goes after the ACLU for what it did in the 60s against the mental health profession, and does not mention ANY of the long standing abuses by the government against the mentally (And those accused of being mentally ill). The ACLU would not have had a case if the abuses were not long standing and horrifying.
I recommend Mr Clayton that before riding the mentally ill hobby horse into the sunset you do some research into the mental health industry leading up to and including the 1960s. It’s very illuminating, and you would be as embarrassed as Michael Bellesiles should be.
Organic brain damage notwithstanding, crazy is a choice.
So is criminal activity. The court appointed receiver should be terminated with prejudiceand the federal corts must bow out of the CA situation.
The false notion that vicious criminals should be treated like little girls on First Communion Day must be exposed and repudiated.
The Bad Guys are in the Penitentiary to be brought to Repentance. We want to impress them with what happens to men who commit crimes; not baby, pamper them in luxurious surroundings. A full belly and a warm place to sleep is all they can reasonably expect.”If you can’t do the time- don’t do the crime.”
Over the front door of all prisons we should hang a sign reading, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” But CA prison terms are far too short, many for but a year or two. And parole revocations are for but one year. When punishment is too light and/or too uncertain, the deterrent effect is lost.
Execution is more effective as the dead have a zero recidivism rate.
Tolerate, moderate or terminate are the alternatives here.
Is our mission to protect society or to coddle criminal psychopaths?
“Organic brain damage notwithstanding, crazy is a choice.”
Schizophrenia is a brain disease. You can see the front lobe changes on CAT scans. Some of the current informed speculation is that the normal neural pruning that takes place in a developing brain continues after the brain stops growing–hence the problems that develop.
Bipolar disorder is also a brain disease–and a lot of recent research suggests that it and schizophrenia are both possible outcomes of the same 10,000-15,000 mutations that put some people at risk.
“Execution is more effective as the dead have a zero recidivism rate.”
How many capital criminals do you think California is holding? It is vanishingly small. Even restoration of the pre-Furman standard whereby states could make a variety of felonies capital would not help. California has never had gobs of capital crimes. Unlike many other states, rape has never been capital in California. Ditto for aggravated assault, vehicle theft, burglary, robbery, and the various drug trafficking crimes which dominate the California prison system. Nor would you find any support in California for making those capital.
california, does have the death penalty by the way, hasnt had an execution in at least 7 or 8 years
apparently– there was some kind of “malfunction” with the injectables– went stale or lost potency or some crap like this
callifornia is a paradise for lawlessness and a craphole for everything else
No question that many mental hospitals into the 1960s were very bad situations. The reasons are complex, and needed fixing. But the ACLU’s goal was not to make these institutions humane, but to make them go away.
I have searched very hard for examples of sane people hospitalized against their will. I am astonished at how few examples I can find. When ACLU’s representative testified before a Congressional committee in 1963, she could not give a single example of a person involuntarily committed without cause. I do not doubt that it sometimes happened, but it was certainly not as common as a lot of people want to think. (Anything sourced from the Citizens’ Committee on Human Rights is automatically out of bounds; Scientology set this up because psychiatry competes with Dianetics–and even Freudian psychoanalysis looks pretty good by comparison to Dianetics, amazingly enough.)
True, but then, holding hands and singing KumBaYa also looks good in comparison to Dianetics.
It’s a lot cheaper, too!
There was an experiment done in the late 1960s at one of the big Boston hospitals (mentioned in the book _Out of Its Mind_). They did a double-blind experiment where psychotics were given one of four treatments:
1. Antipsychotic medications alone.
2. Psychotherapy alone.
3. Antipsychotic medication plus psychotherapy.
4. Regular conversations with a friendly person who was not a psychiatrist.
2 and 4 were indistinguishable in results; 3 and 1 were so close as to statistically insignificant. The director of the experiment was a committed psychotherapist; he finally saw the results, and admitted that for psychotics, psychotherapy was a waste.
A double-blind study? So the test subject were unaware of whether they getting psychotherapy or not? That must have been very subtle therapy.
Maliovo:
Psychotherapy was originally known as “the talking cure” when used to help PTSD sufferers during World War I. Yes, patients could have no idea whether they were talking to a psychotherapist or not.
The biggest fear is that many of these released convicts will run for and be elected into the Democratic California congress. Anthony Weiner can be their poster boy.
Hey, where do you think those “deinstitutionalized” crazies ended up? Those former flower children didn’t just end up on the streets. News flash, the crazies ended up in the local jails and lockups doing time on the installment plan. Jails became the mental health delivery system of choice for the consciousness raising baby boomer generation building smokeless, upgraded jails for the middle class–while the judges continued to take their hits on doobies. In all the uproar over the torture of water boarding for the last ten years, not one mention has been made of liberal rubber rooming of inmates that can’t handle a tobacco free healthy jail–but we must have are medical, keep America green, grass. I guess it’s only torture if you disagree with the social goals , and only if it’s not called aversion therapy.
True enough. I work in and around the legal and jail system here in West Michigan. There are many of the mentally ill who have found new housing in our county jails and state prisons.
In our little town we had a mentally ill young man off his meds who murdered a college student in the bathroom at the train station on his way home for the summer. He beat him to death. 30 people in the lobby heard him screaming as he was killed and did nothing.
A few years later an older couple were beaten senseless with a lead pipe on their way to the movie theater downtown by a man off his meds from the local homeless shelter.
I was always amazed how we emptied our mental institutions and suddenly Reagan was the animal who created the masses of homeless when the mentally ill hit the streets.
In college I spent time at one of our local mental institutions before it was closed helping a friend with some of the patients. Later he was nearly killed when he was attacked by a dozen patients who he thought were safe.
I am not callous, the mentally ill should have a better chance, but they didn’t and don’t. I can attest that they are treated horribly in jail.
A crazy world we live in.
Letting felons out of prison should make for a lot of fun. Maybe we will create some conservatives out of the mentally challenged liberals in California, albeit there vote will most likely be cancelled out by the now voting felons accosting them and their property.
Good luck California. Well maybe not, you deserve whatever you get out of this. Why not just go back to being a Mexican state, your headed that way anyway. Shanty towns and lawlessness will most likely rule your future and that future is now. Please leave the rest of us out of it.
“I am not callous, the mentally ill should have a better chance, but they didn’t and don’t. I can attest that they are treated horribly in jail.”
Into the early 19th century, the severely mentally ill were often locked up in the same buildings as prisoners–a terrible situation for both low-level criminals and the mentally ill. At least we segregate them in modern prisons and jails–but it is a terrible way of doing things, to return to 1800.
dumbest legislature on the planet!!!
Jerry Brown claims the state needs more money, but he seemed to think it had enough to give the prison guards a new contract with better pay, over 8 weeks of vacation and the ability to accrue an unlimited amount to sell back in their final year and use that inflated final year amount to boost their pensions. Oh, and the state also has enough money to pay for several hundred commissions consisting of political cronies at ~100K a person for part time work.
If the state can afford those there sure doesn’t appear to be much reason to raise taxes.
I predict that: California will bankrupt and be placed in a sort of federal receivership in which the federal government will sunstitute itself for the state government. All states will then, via precedent, be subject to political cannibalism by the central government, which will employ its military forces to ensure compliance with its unconstitutional demands.
Oscumbo is deploying his handpicked flunkys in the military to act his enforcers in filling his gulags and slaughtering or disappearing his opponents.
Worst of all, those of us who despise the actions of Jeremiah Wrights’ protege
find ourselves without representation: a dimwit alaskan housewife or a gaggle of wimpy weirdos who are kinda-sorta for and/or against almost everything, more or less simultaneously. “Some of my pals are for that, and some against it, and I often stick with my pals.”
One candidate thinks that as long as one trusts God he may behave as viciously as he wishes. Another supposes that God is a flesh and bones man who lives on a faraway planet and spends his time servicing his thousands of wives. Still another proudly broadcasts his Catholic affiliation while regularly attending an evangelical church. Clowns like Christie are against dope and abortion; but with ten million exceptions and weasel clauses; hypocrisy at its finest.
And therein lies the difference between the two parties: the Demonrats are blatantly amoral and the GOPhers are hypocritically so. Proof? Just watch while the GOPhers agree to raise the federal debt limit in return for some nebulous and miniscule Demonrat commitment to reduce spending. Last time out 400 billion turned into 38 million. This time it will be even more sickening.
And Ryans insane and unconstitutional plan to create a giant healthcare toilet into which we can all flush billions in tax monies to fund another government
intrusuion into private enterprise is but a silly, stupid rework of obumbocare and/or massachusettsmormoncare.
Are you off your meds again?
Your negative side is showing a bit today.
this person hasjust about covered every point in this conversation….i mostly want to agree with you on a lot of it….but,///
It would seem that not all the mentally ill are roaming the streets or sitting in jail cells. Some have access to the internet.
No question about that. My favorite was the website devoted to proving that the world is actually flat AND 9/11 was an inside job–and in ways that I did not quite understand, they were tied together.
definitely would not be surprised if some california prisoners had some access to the internet
And why are California Prison Guards paid so much? They already have a lucrative monopoly on the penitentiary cell phone market.
Missing in the discussion is the point made by both Scalia and Alito – the LAW says that the justices are to restrict themselves to specific processes for remedy of prison problems.
The Constitution says that Congress can decide the scope of judicial interpretation and rulings but the majority went beyond what the applicable law allowed.
Again, judicial activism is running wild and people will pay with their lives.
That said, California state government has mismanaged this task. We could remedy the whole problem with private, contracted prisons and within the 2 year window the judges declared.
I did point out that Scalia and Alioto made good points in their dissents about the legal aspects of the problem. Still, there are circumstances so bad that someone has to force California to behave like a responsible political entity.
Also, private prisons are cheaper than public prisons, but it is not at all clear that they are enough cheaper to solve California’s problem. Take a look at the suits against CCA–replacing public employee union greed and laziness with private corporation greed and corner-cutting just moves the problem. It takes considerable oversight to make contracted government services work well, and it is not clear that California state government is able to do that well.
You did indeed mention the dissenting opinions but my takeaway from your text was the point, perfectly correct, that SCOTUS was over-riding the STATE legislature and its police power.
Perhaps I should have been clearer in my comment that the dissent also raised the issue of the Supreme Court over-riding the specific FEDERAL law on how to conduct complaints about prison conditions.
This has implications on the balance of power between between Congress and the judiciary. The authors of both the Constitution and the Federalist Papers would have been shocked at this decision.
A large portion of prisoners are illegal aliens (maybe 30%), why not deport them?
If we have to set some prisoners free, why not busload them to the fenced border and let them go back to Mexico.
Prisons should be a place for punishment, not a resting place for the criminals next crime gig.
With our current border policy, deportation is equivalent to releasing them three months from now. Reducing the number of illegal aliens present would probably be worthwhile, but that requires a notion of borders.
1. Prisons were, by federal legislation from the 70′s through the 90′s as an economic component (a growth industy) to reduce the depressed economies in rural areas of the nation. The construction of prisons as an economic development strategy to stimulate depressed rural communities and small towns in the U.S. became widespread. Not only does evidence suggest that by many measures, prisons do not produce economic growth for local economies. additionally, massive numbers of prisons in rural America creates dramatic consequences for the entire nation as huge numbers of inmates from urban areas become rural residents for the purposes of census-based formulas used to allocate government dollars and political representation.
2. In plain language…now we gotta fill’em and keep’em full to the brim! Now, the consequences begin to mount. First comes the discussion of community corrections role versus the state corrections role. That was a short discussion in any state. Community corrections could not sustain the courts mandated economic impact so, they became willing endorsers of the new states correction economic model over community corrections.
3. A clever means was adopted to create and maintain the needed inmate populations for all the new state prisons. Simply relegislate 100′s of misdemeanors from the criminal, vehicle, civil and business codes to low level felonies. In addition, there have been numerous prosecutorial and court gimmicks developed to further this kind of effort. The most significant, developed from the late 60′s and 70′s, was the introduction of prosecutions, convictions and sentencing on the basis of ‘circumstantial’ evidence. The next is more familiar to most and is done by ‘stacking-the-deck’ with multiple charges. Even in the case of misdemeanors, many states have legislation that if convicted on multiple counts of any charges or specific classes of charges it becomes a felony conviction and sentencing. Likewise, many states have legislated that while your initial charge(s) and conviction may be misdemeanors, if you violate the terms of your probation, that probation violation can be deemed a felony.
4. So that I don’t ramble on endlessly, let me conclude by saying that there are three general classifications of inmamtes within the corrections system. they are Maximum security, medium security and minimum security. The overwhelming majority of inmate populations are classified as medium and minimum and these types of inmates (and taxpayers) could be better served in community corrections, adequately lessening the subject matter of this topic.
The notion that prison growth was an intentional policy to promote economic development is laughable. Prisons grew from the 1970s into the early 1990s onward because high violent crime rates understandably scared the wits out of the population, and they demanded increasingly long sentences. Laws such as three strikes, mandatory minimum sentences, and an increasing population of mentally ill criminals, made prison growth inevitable. There were positive consequences to this, primarily in reducing violent crime rates from the early 1990s onward.
Does everyone in prison need to be there? Probably not. But to see this as some intentional effort to create jobs by increasing the number of prisoners is silly.
Mr. Cramer, I think you are being too kind.
There’s no doubt that the free market and public sector unions both took advantage of the outcry for more prisons, but to say that was the objective puts one in the same category as the 9/11 “truther” idiocy.
Of course, it was liberals in the legislature and in the courts who gave us the high crime rates that resulted in the outcry for more enforcement.
Mr. Cramer…sadly, you’ve shown yourself to be uniformed! I would simply invite you to contact the National Advisory Council on Rural Development, research; the Conservation, Credit, and Rural Development Subcommittee of the House Agricultural Committee; the USDA, etc. If you’re going to put yourself out as some expert…be informed!
Do not confuse, “If we’re going to build a prison, let’s build it where labor is available, construction costs are low, and the community will welcome the jobs” with “Let’s make the laws more stringent so we can build more prisons.” There is a big difference.
As a reference to only a small frame of time….Between 1990 and 1997, 203 correctional facilities (20 federal) were built in rural and small town communities. There are about 177,000 inmates in these new facilities, and according to the [U.S. Department of Agriculture], in at least 60 rural U.S. counties the shift from population loss in the 1980s to population gain in the 1990s can be fully or partly explained by increases in prisoner populations. The new non-metro prisons have about 55,000 employees, a major addition to the overall rural economy. The commuting field for employees typically extends to several surrounding counties. Thus, there may be as many as a third of all non-metro counties sharing in the direct job growth just from the facilities built during this decade.
The prisons had to go somewhere. But so what? This only demonstrates that the prisons were built in places where the jobs were welcome, and it was relatively cheap to buy land and build. Do not confuse where with why.
Every prison built is a major expense, both in capital costs and operating costs. As of 2001, state prisons averaged $22,650 per year in direct operating costs. To build prisons is to acknowledge that your society has failed to inculcate morality in its population. (Of course, some people think that’s a good thing.)
What! Are you a rock? I directed you to sources who can help you (doubtful) come to grips with a concerted ‘economic strategy’ to reverse depressed rural areas economies with the building of prisons…that you claim is “laughable” in your earlier response. If you’re not willing to put forth any efforts to become informed, there is no sense in any further discussion with you.
No, Thomas, you did not direct me to some sources. You mentioned several organizations, but provided no names of reports, articles, or books. It would be like saying that I should research the War in Iraq by contacting the Pentagon.
Represent only a small frame of time…..Between 1990 and 1997, 203 correctional facilities (20 federal) were built in rural and small town communities. There are about 177,000 inmates in these new facilities, and according to the [U.S. Department of Agriculture], in at least 60 rural U.S. counties the shift from population loss in the 1980s to population gain in the 1990s can be fully or partly explained by increases in prisoner populations. The new non-metro prisons have about 55,000 employees, a major addition to the overall rural economy. The commuting field for employees typically extends to several surrounding counties. Thus, there may be as many as a third of all non-metro counties sharing in the direct job growth just from the facilities built during this decade.
I can list more government and non government references to the government strategy than this site will allow!
Now in fairness, prison population problems back in time (generally 70′s forward) was the [beginning] foundation of discourse within the crimes and punishment community. However, that discourse quickly altered its course, due to the existing and rising rural economic crisis. Thus, it became an economic strategy of the federal government and States, to build prisons, lots of prisons, over several decades in rural communities.
As to my commenting on what you may conclude is some conspiracy to fill all those new rural prisons, I can take you step by step starting with the court decrees handed down to community corrections who, in most cases, could not sustain the economic impact, thus, they began to corrdinate with their regional crime and justice coordinators for some resolve. All this taking place at the same time as the above actions. The resolve? Reduce community corrections! The strategy to achieve this, I have disccused on here previously. Its all a coordinated strategy created and maintained upon the circular priciples I have stated and the supporting facts are not, nor have they ever been classified.
Expenditure: Federal, state, and local governments spent a total of about $74 billion on corrections. (2007)
Employment: About 61% of corrections employees served at the state level of government, 34% at the local level, and 5% at the federal level. (2007)
Now, see if you can consider [all] the ‘external’ employment, goods and services it takes to run all the corrections in the U.S. Corrections today, is a significant part of our States and national employment and economy! But for some States bureaucratic issues [all] corrections would be industrialized for-profit operations into the national economy. All states and federal corrections support as many inmates into the system as the courts will allow, as a matter of economics today, over a pure matter of crime and punishment! The corrections systems employee lots of people directly in the system and far, far more people outside the system providing goods and services.
See that $74 billion ‘direct’ expenditure up above? Try translating it to employees and industries outside the prison systems….from architects, construction workers, prison hardwares mfg’s, prison technologies, paper and office mfg’s and suppliers, electronic/recreation mfg’s and suppliers, medical mfg’s and suppliers, testile mfg’s and suppliers, food mfg’s and suppliers, and on down the long list. Prison systems today translates in a big way to the nations economy! Prisons with low occupancy or no occupancy doesn’t bode well for the economy! Starting to grasp the basic picture?
“I can list more government and non government references to the government strategy than this site will allow!”
And yet you have not given even ONE identifiable source for your claims. Give me an URL, or even a print source reference. [Department of Agriculture] is only slightly more useful than, “everyone knows.”
Look young feller! I gave you a short list of resource contacts that will more than educate you on this subject matter. You are no intellectual on this subject much less informed. California’s legal and police chiefs oppose the reformation of any sentencing commission, blue ribbon or governmental to recommed any overhaul. Defend that one! The proposal would have given the new commission authorities comparable to the powers exercised by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Now, if you’re as informed in Califiornia as you seemingly purport, you would know why law enforcement, including prosecutors and the legislature have long rejected such commission and the fixing of California’s sentencing and corrections problems aside from the superficial populist rhetoric.
Members of my family have been involved with legislatures from coast to coast, beginning in California during Reagan’s administration and a tri-state panel advocating much of what I have long disagreed with and still do. Let me once again direct you to resources you seemingly have some adversion of researching.
National Advisory Council on Rural Development, research; the Conservation, Credit, and Rural Development Subcommittee of the House Agricultural Committee; the USDA, etc. Each of those, if you do your homework, will lead you methodically to each of the several etc’s also involved and contain a wealth of supporting data which was advosory to the congressional committee and those department, agencies and corporations responsible for implementing the legislation. Since you’ve matter of factly claimed your expertise, I have no desire to do your home work for you or assist you any further than what I have.
You’re attempting to claim that California’s crime and punishment system is isolated and unique when infact, it is not! With or without a formal independent commission, the system follows the established parameters of policy set by federal legislation that I’ve attempted to advise you of…unsuccessfully!
While you’re trying to represent the mentally ill, murders, rapists and big drug dealers as the ‘problem’, you ignore those crime classifications hardly represent more than a mere fraction of California’s incarcerated population.
As to your premise of the mentally ill I would invite you to refer to the CRB…maybe start with CRB-99-02 for some facts that remain consistant today.
An estimated 10-15 percent of offenders who enter the local criminal justice system are mentally ill, the same as in the state correctional system.
· Local correctional systems do not engage in long range strategic planning on how to best identify and serve the mentally ill offender at the local level. For example, such a plan could establish an integrated and planned response that might reduce the number of mentally ill people who come into contact with the criminal justice system.
First. You haven’t even tried to address the factual numbers of ‘mentally ill’ incarcerated.
Second, You havent tried to factually report what classification levels of the mentally ill you’re trying to represent in your commenting.
Third. You ignore that there is a complete lack at the local level to 1) identify the mentally ill and 2)to deal with them. Their only charge is to keep the conduit flowing to the State criminal institutions!
As to your ramblings about the costs. Maybe you should spend some time with the CDCR’s 2011-12 budgets and become informed. Maybe you will gain some understanding in just where the big bucks go! When you take a good look at who gets the most money from the budgets, consider something I’ve mentioned about contributing back to the economy (61.9 vs 9.3). Then see if you can figure out who the ‘pawns of the system’ are.
Now, I’ve had enough of this non productive nonsense.
Why don’t we just give up?
Nearly every article here (and American Thinker) determinedly proves there is no hope.
So some of these smartest people in the room should tell us how to cede safely. Let’s give California back to Mexico since they want it so badly. And Ruben Navarette can become Premier of Alta California since he’s sure he knows how to run things better than the gringos who developed the state into the world powerhouse it has been for a century. Let’s give New Mexico back to the Pueblo Indians because they were there first. Let’s give Louisiana back to France. Alaska can go back to Russia. Hawaii back to the militant Polynesians. New England can go back to whoever will take it. The East Anglians?
Then we free people can huddle in Texas until we die. Which will make the entire world happy.
Is this solution doesn’t appeal, we need to start talking about real world solutions instead of endlessly harping on how bad everything is.
“Nearly every article here (and American Thinker) determinedly proves there is no hope.”
I want to have hope. But America is in serious decline because a culture built around greed, lust, and selfishness, has no future to it.
Moralist like you are the problem. Let a person make a buck again. Let investors make a return on capitol. Government should enforce the law and not try and force social justice out comes.
Let me take care of myself and my own. It’s not greed. I want to live and work at my capacity not your judgement. You want to moralize about other go suck on a lemon. The self reliant Anglo-Saxon nature of this society will reassert itself.
A society where the only determinant of what is okay is, “Can I get what I want?” looks an awful lot like California.
“I want to have hope. But America is in serious decline because a culture built around greed, lust, and selfishness, has no future to it.”
This is one of the stupidest things I have ever read.
The core lesson of the enlightenment is “cultivate your own garden” but to you it is greed and selfishness.
Lust. Well I can tell you the society without lust is the one with no future.
So tell us about your utopia of castrated monks and will call that hell on earth.
You seem to have misunderstood me. What is your reaction to finding out that the leadership of the society sees hotel chambermaids as fair game for rape? When television producers try to exchange football tickets for sex with children? When ACLU officials plead no contest to downloading and paying for videos of the rape of little girls?
I’d respond that that’s an example of the criminal justice system working, and if you want to play the “convicted member/leader condemns the entire movement” game, I have some things to discuss with you about your faith’s priests…
My point was not to condemn the ACLU (or television producers) but that few people who condemn “moralism” really mean it. Nearly everyone supports using the law to enforce morals. Some just want an exception for their behavior.
My faith has no priests. Clerical celibacy was a well-intentioned mistake of the eleventh century–part of the Cluniac Reforms. It denies a fundamental aspect of human nature–sexual desire–and the results, unsurprisingly, are not pretty.
I’m not sure what makes you think the Enlightenment’s operating principles excluded the notion of government enforcing morality. When Beccaria promoted a reform of criminal law, he was not proposing that everything was okay. Jefferson’s proposed reforms of Virginia law included reducing buggery from capital punishment to castration. There were still laws against fraud, bigamy, and yes, even regulation of alcohol consumptions.
“…deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill.”
Been there, done that. Ronnie Reagan, mid-70′s…
Uh, no. Reagan was a player but a minor one in California’s effort (the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act of 1967), but this was going on throughout the U.S. in the late 1960s and 1970s. The motivations were very noble (for the most part), but it did not work.
Al Gore’s tv channel has a show called Vanguard (on youtube also)They’ve done a few reports on prisons that are worth viewing.
The entire system has broken down in CA for several reasons.Everyone but the politicians can explain why it has failed.It will also fail all over the country eventually.
More illegals and more births=more people,poverty and crime.
Releasing convicts will not only endanger law abiding citizens it will increase crime overall by demonstrating legal punishment is only enforced on paper.
The ACLU are criminals themselves, they represent their interests,not what is best for society.They created the human rights violations occuring to the mentally ill that were dumped helpless onto our streets and in prisons.Are the mentally ill better off being homeless,confused,abandonded,starving,beaten and raped in prisons with violent predators than being institutionalized ?
Does political mismanagement,greed and ignorance justify the act of turning the mentally ill and criminals loose to victimize the very people whom pay billions to care for ,incarcerate and elect these people? Are we supposed to all buy guns,quit work,go on welfare and home school our children to assure our/their safety and compensate for political failure? When did society change from the idea of freedom,possitive growth,representation for taxation,innovation,care for the elderly and truly disabled,educational advancement and protection from criminals to being tax slaves to illegals,welfare slugs,criminals,egomanical politicians,fanatical religious dictatorships,drug lords,submission to radical minorities who aren’t minorities,mini socialist unions and businesses that are such failures they need our financial assistance to survive?
Privatizing prisons can’t be worse than the mess we now face.
pardon me for letting my frustrations show.
“Privatizing prisons can’t be worse than the mess we now face.”
Cheer up, not all of America is as messed up as California.
“When did society change from the idea of freedom,possitive growth,representation for taxation,innovation,care for the elderly and truly disabled,educational advancement and protection from criminals to being tax slaves to illegals,welfare slugs,criminals,egomanical politicians,fanatical religious dictatorships,drug lords,submission to radical minorities who aren’t minorities,mini socialist unions and businesses that are such failures they need our financial assistance to survive?”
About 1967. At least that is when the intellectuals changed course. It has taken a while for them to implement their schemes.
Try several decades earlier!
The 60s were merely when the rot became glaringly obvious.
The 60s were the 60s because of what went before them.
Read Dewey and Marx if you want a clear view of the 20th Century. Make sure you include the Humanist Manifestos while you’re at it.
its hard to change things here. there will never be any meaningful change via vote. To be honest until the conservatives or even people with common sense start to man up and force the govt to comply then its a lost cause. hollywood major player here..LIB sacrememnto- lib, sanfran-lib.you have illegals pouring in residents who are born and bred on the welfare state. and politicians eagerly giving things away to gain/stay in power. the conservatives here are content in being in the shadows or at best not rocking the boat too much for fear of the liberals not liking them or some mistaken view of ‘peace’ but thats the same through out. you will not change a single thing being polite. you have groups wanting to shut us up and rule us by any means needed including force. thes and we sit back and think that some speeches and placecards actually do something
“While California Democrats like to joke about prison rape of those that they don’t like, decent people recognize that there is an obligation to protect prisoners from other prisoners.”
It’s not just California Democrats, but pretty much the entire anti-death penalty movement, no matter what end of the scale they are on, from the ACLU to Penn and Teller, or opposing unlimited medical detention of sex offenders.
The reasoning apparently goes as follows:
The death penalty is cruel and unusual. (Okay, let’s say you are right . . .)
Putting them away for life is worse anyway. (Worse than cruel and unusual is what exactly?)
Then there are all the innocent people. (Who are now in prison for life, which you’ve said is worse than the death penalty.)
And besides, wink, wink, nod, nod, other prisoners will take care of them, if you know what we mean. (You mean extrajudicial rape; of innocent people; for their entire lives; because killing them would be “cruel”.)
At that point I realized they might actually have a point – we ARE putting the wrong people in prison or medical custody.
Where’s the Congressional impeachment hearings on the five justices who signed on to this (latest) ACLU-esque nonsense?
And folks in the other 56 states may be laughing at California but wake up, you’re next.
Why don’t we legalize drugs and only put people in prison for theft and violence? I am tired of paying taxes to jail people in an attempt to save them from themselves. I don’t use drugs and have no desire to start. But I have no beef with or sympathy for those who do. The war on drugs is a complete failure. You can’t run social policy via criminal law. We throw millions of people in prison, over load our justice system and erode our civil liberties in the name of stopping drug use. And yet we still have millions of drug users and an illegal drug trade in the billions that is slowly turning Mexico into a failed state. Time to take a different approach.
ACLU’s campaign is to reduce many of the theft felonies to misdemeanors.
According to the feds, 102,795 illegals are in California prisons. http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/04/californias-criminal-alien-pop.html
It’s not so much a shortsighted prison policy as it is a massive invasion of illegals. And, incredibly, our state and federal governments don’t care. They don’t care how many tens of millions of illegals continue to pour over the border like locusts because to care would be “racist”. Or “nativist” as the spectacular nitwit George W. Bush calls it.
Actually, the American people don’t care either since they refuse to elect people who will do anything about the problem.
It’s not as if these locusts are confining themselves to California. They’re passing through and heading on to Utah, Indiana, New Jersey, etc. Take a good look at California, Americans, because that is your future. Understand?
Most people have no history. Most history that people do have usually consists of the time they’ve been on this planet. Forgotten in all this is the concept of prisons was developed as a humane alternative to the usual punishment for felony offensives – death. The ‘enlightened’ ruling class of America has seen fit to deny the fundamentals of democracy and has decreed that there shall not be a death penalty regardless of the wishes of the masses and in doing so just creates just another problem. Their solution ultimately is to move the death penalty to your streets, businesses, and homes. Of course all that due process and appeals stuff will not be involved. Enjoy.
WHY NOT RE-OPEN ALCATRAZ AND LET THE IMMATES CLEAN IT UP ??
WOULD HAVE PLENTY OF ROOM THERE.
The federal government closed Alcatraz in the early 1960s because it was extremely expensive to operate, and housed a small number of prisoners. What would be required to make Alcatraz a functional prison would be more expensive than building a prison from scratch.
Identifying mentally ill people before they commit a serious crime, and getting them treatment, would remove perhaps 5-10% of the prison population. (About 16% of prisoners are mentally ill, and they are almost twice as expensive to lock up as sane prisoners.)
Why not use the death penalty to get rid of the worst monsters in the system?
There are a few dozen inmates on Death Row. The vast majority of California prison inmates did not commit capital crimes. Even if the Supreme Court were to overturn the Furman decision that limited capital punishment to a limited set of felonies, it would make no difference in the prison overcrowding problem, because California has never been big on capital punishment. Rape has never been a capital crime in California, for example, unlike many other states.
The gigantic, swollen American Police State, exceeding the incarceration rates even in psychotic totalitarian dictatorships like China, Iran, and Syria has finally reached the breaking point.
The simple truth is, the War on Drugs (a failed, psychotic, nasty, rabid Big Government program if there ever was one), regardless of whether or not you favor legalization, is no longer financially stable. The only organizations that actively and financially support our financially-ruinous prohibition are the cop and prison guard unions. Who wouldn’t want to primarily arrest and then guard some of the most peaceful and non-violent people in our society: Marijuana users? It makes that 100 grand a year salary a pretty nice deal.
How is California supposed to pay for ever-bigger prisons? It can’t pay for what it has now. Missing in all this discussion is the fact that California has had decades of court warnings to clean up its act, but politically the Police unions and the Prison Guard unions virtually run the state.
California made a calculated risk not to legalize marijuana in the face of well-funded prison guard opposition to it.
California made the wrong choice.
Our incarceration rates are higher than totalitarian states because we do not execute people with the enthusiasm shown by China, Iran, and Syria. I do not consider any of these examples of places to emulate.
Anyone in a California prison for marijuana-related charges is there for pretty large scale trafficking–not for possession or use. Opposition to marijuana legalization was across the political spectrum. As I understand it, even the California Democratic Party opposed this particular measure. Police across California opposed the measure because they have already seen a pretty serious set of problems associated with the “medical marijuana” operations–not because they get any benefit from keeping it illegal. (There is plenty of crime other than marijuana to keep police employed in California.)
You are also incorrect about who opposes drug legalization. While marijuana legalization enjoys support from a large minority of Americans, legalization of meth, heroin, cocaine, toluene, etc., does not. This is because nearly all Americans know someone who has made a real mess of his life and of his family because of these drugs.
Juries are kept, like mushrooms, in the dark about the financial consequences of their decisions. That is a rule rabidly argued for by the Prosecutors and the Police. They are beholden to the “Victims” lobbies. e
Nobody is going to support executing marijuana drug dealers. And yet Juries will convict consensual acts of commerce between adults because they are not told the full truth about their decisions. Putting someone in jail for marijuana for ten years is a million dollar baby.
You put millions of marijuana users in prison, and pretty soon you are talking about serious money.
Good thing it is someone else’s money. Is it worth it? The Police Unions and the Prison Guard Unions think so, and generally they get what they want.
That is, until we have a sovereign debt crisis, the first of which will obviously be California.
I AM NOT AS VERSED IN POETIC WORDS AS SOME OF YOU ARE, IN FACT MY TYPING NEEDS VAST IMPROVEMENT….BUT I HAVE A BRAIN AND IT IS IN WELL WORKING ORDER…I HAVE ENJOYED READING MR CRAMER COMMENTS, NO DOUBT HE IS A LAWYER OR A VERY EDUCATED PROFESSIONAL…I DO AGREE WITH JUST ABOUT EVERY THING YOU SAID….MY THOUGHT GOES BACK TO THE 1950S AND I CAN SEE WHERE THE BELOVED USA THAT WE HAVE KNOWN IN THE PAST HAS SLOWLY ROTTED TO THE POINT THAT I DREAD TO LEAVE MY GRAND BABIES TO PAY THE TAB FOR WHAT WE ARE NOS SEEING, …I WENT TO CALIF SEVERAL YEARS WHEN MY CHILDREN WAS SMALL, AND I HAD A LARGE CAMERA CASE, AND COMING FROM THE S.E. USA, THAT WAS A COMMON PRACTICE TO CARRY YOUR FIREARM ….NOW IT IS A BIG DEAL TO BE CAUGHT IN CAL. OR NY WITH A PISTOL FROM ANOTHER STATE…..MAYBE SOMEONE WOULD HELP LESSEN THE CRIME PROB. IN CA. IF ALL GOOD CITIZENS WERE FREELY ALLOWED TO ”CARRY, CONCILED”…AND WAS ENCOURAGED AS WE ARE HERE IN MY STATE TO USE DEADLY FORCE TO PROTECT YOURSELF AND A HELPLESS VICTUM, OF FAMILY….MY ENTIRE FAMILY IS ARMED TO THE TEETH, AND NO ONES IS A THREAT TO ANY OTHER DECENT CITIZEN…WE JUST ARE WELL READY TO PROTECT OURSELVES….SO FAR I NOR ANY OF MY FAMILY HAS HAD TO WASTE ANYONE….AND I PRAY THAT IT NEVER HAPPENS….JW
Many of my friends went to prison in California. Mostly possession with intent & drug related violence. In most cases other gangsters tried to steal their dope.
My friends like any group of people are all different. Many saw prison as a goal. “State Time” brands you an “OG” for life. Lifetime respect on the streets. They then go onto a normal job. A few can not adjust to normal society and will require incarceration for the rest of their lives.
California needs Prisons, but the system is screwed up on all levels. Corrections Officers, teachers, Psychiatrists, contractors, architects all give money to support high incarceration rates. Counciling Professions make a mint of the CDC.
Parole Violaters go back to state prison for failing “piss test”. Guards are often sadistic. They file charges against weak inmates because they fear retaliation from hardened gangsters. This is behavior of bully. Their goal is keeping the inmates locked up. PO’s let fearsome gangsters slide & violate drug addicts for nothing. Parole Boards have no clue how to determine which inmates are likely to reoffend. They are risk adverse and like the easy gig.
If you join the gang when you are 12 years old and later get a felony as an adult it will cost you an extra 10 years. Gang Membership is not a crime. Everybody should be sentenced equally.
Government Employees are risk adverse. They will always do the easy thing. They are incapable of making the any kind of tough call.
Judges got the gig because they are politcally connected. Liberal Judges get tired of sending off minority offenders and really put the meat to caucasion criminals.
Crime is down in California despite swelling gang populations. Some gangsters committ crimes and others do not. Lock up the ones that committ crime & leave the others alone. Some of them might become Conservtives.
The mentally ill released in CA was NOT the result of any legislative action: It was the result of the ACLU pursuit of freedom from incarceration for the mentall ill in O’Connor v. Donaldson 422 U.S. 563 (1975). Reagan closed them because they were now empty….This backfired as the bar to commit those who truly need help is so high, as we see from cases such as Loughner and the Virginia Tech shooter.
You are incorrect. O’Connor v. Donaldson certainly played a role in encouraging widespread deinstitutionalization, but it was already underway in California and New York by the late 1960s. The Lanterman-Petris-Short Act of 1967 started the ball rolling in California.
Do you know why there is so many more prisoners today than there were just 15 years ago? It’s because EVERYTHING is illegal in California these days. People who would have never gone to prison 15 years ago are considered criminals today. What’s worse, they arrest and convict people who have nothing more than a drug problem and are not criminals, send them to prison, and when they are released from prison they are put on parole. Now you, as a taxpayer, have just spent $50,000 to keep a drug addict locked up. When they get out of prison, they are still a drug addict, because California does not offer any help or rehabilitation. You may even now have a drug addict, criminal on the streets because this drug addict was celled up with a real criminal and learned some new skills. But say they didn’t, and by some miracle they come out exactly how they went in, just a drug addict. Now they will be drug tested for their parole and sent back to prison if they have a dirty test. There goes another $50,000 of taxpayers money. And if you don’t think this is a common occurence, guess again. Many of california’s prisoners are there for drug charges. They need help, not to be thrown in a cell and dehumanized. This only worsens the problem. If we want to see some change, we need to do some serious prison reforming and not lock drug addicts up to begin with. This will save countless millions of dollars, and the crime rate would go down because your not turning drug addicts into criminals.
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