Budget

RECENT POSTS

September 6, 2011 | 3:07 PM | By

How “realignment” will change criminal justice in California

CDCR

California has what one might call a “pressing problem” when it comes to the prison system. In May, the US Supreme Court confirmed a lower court’s conclusion that California’s prison system is so overcrowded that inmates are being held in conditions that violate the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. So the state was told to do something about this overcrowding, and fast.

Basically, by the end of June, 2013, the state will have to reduce its prison population from 144,000 inmates to 110,000 inmates. How? California, led by Governor Jerry Brown, has a plan: move supervision and incarceration of lower-level felons to the counties. That plan goes into action on October 1 of this year. Realignment is set to drastically change the way we do criminal justice in California. Here’s why.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Corrections, Budget, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice, Dan Macallair, David Ball, Prison Overcrowding, Realignment, Santa Clara University
July 25, 2011 | 10:02 AM | By

Will fiscal crisis and prison overcrowding spur Three Strikes reform?

As I noted last week, a new poll suggests that California voters seem open to the possibility of reforming the state’s Three Strikes Law, the 1994 “tough-on-crime” measure that allows prosecutors to seek a prison term of 25-to-life for certain third-time offenders. Californians may get their chance to vote for reform in 2012, when opponents of Three Strikes hope to introduce a ballot initiative to modify, if not fully repeal, the law.

Paul Rosynsky of the Oakland Tribune reports:

By focusing on the costs of housing long-term prisoners and on the state’s need to reduce its inmate population, opponents said they believe a ballot measure amending the law, promised for 2012, has its best chance of success since Three Strikes was enacted.

The dollars-and-cents argument, combined with long-standing arguments that Three Strikes is unfair, could finally be the right mix to beat back a strong lobby that over the years has included politicians fearful of being labeled “soft on crime,” victims advocating for longer sentences and a wealthy prison-guard union, opponents of the law said.

Any reforms to the Three Strikes Law would likely have a less dramatic immediate effect here in the Bay Area than elsewhere in the state. That’s because prosecutors have discretion to choose whether to use the law or not, and Bay Area district attorneys already use it more sparingly than their counterparts in Southern California. But, of course, the more indirect effects of Three Strikes upon prison overcrowding and the state budget equally affect voters and taxpayers statewide.

FILED UNDER: Corrections, Courts, Budget, Prison Overcrowding, sentencing, Three Strikes
July 1, 2011 | 12:33 PM | By

Dismantling the criminal justice system, one penny at a time

 

Helene Goupil

Cutting back on GPS monitoring is one of California's many budget-related cuts

 

Consider some prime sources that feed our jail and prison systems: probation violators, parole violators, and petty drug and property offenders. There are a number of ways the state is chipping away at its criminal justice apparatus simply by underfunding the mechanisms that sweep up such offenders in the first place, and the mechanisms that elevate their status from a person supervised in the community to one who needs to be locked up.

Take probation. A lot of people currently in prison were once on county probation. In 2009, the Judicial Council of California reported that about 19,000 people head to prison each year because they violate their probation (and that number doesn’t include those prosecuted for new crimes while on probation). These inmates started at what is essentially the lowest rung of seriousness in the criminal justice system, probation, and are now in just about the most serious place you can get, state prison. Once these folks entered the criminal justice system, for whatever reason, their criminality escalated, and they became further entrenched.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Budget, GPS, Parole, Realignment
June 29, 2011 | 5:24 PM | By

New CA budget slashes statewide gang, drug taskforces

Ali Winston

California Governor Jerry Brown’s new “austerity” budget, approved yesterday by the State Legislature, will drastically trim spending on courts, welfare services and schools. According to Attorney General Kamala Harris, law and order spending, which is typically one of the last budget items to go under the knife, will also suffer.

Over the past two days, Attorney General Kamala Harris and several law enforcement associations have issued statements warning of the consequences of Brown’s budget for public safety. $71 million will be cut from the California Department of Justice’s budget, eliminating DOJ’s law enforcement arm consisting of the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement and the Bureau of Investigations and Intelligence.

The California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement operated on a $51.07 million budget during Fiscal Year 2010-11, which the Bureau of Investigations & Intelligence’s budget during the same period was $37.13 million. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Attorney General of California, Budget, Bureau of Investigations & Intelligence, Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement
June 28, 2011 | 2:28 PM | By

How the new budget deals with prison overcrowding

Andrew Magill.

A rainy day in California brings solemn news from Governor Jerry Brown’s office: budget compromise. Brown is walking away from his stalled plan to put tax extensions to the voters in a special election this fall. Instead, Brown will, with the legislature’s Democrats, put forth a budget that assumes the state will take in $4 billion more than it did last year (which is possible). If the state doesn’t take in enough revenue, massive cuts would go into effect, including a possible $20 million cut to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Corrections, Budget, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Realignment
June 16, 2011 | 10:52 AM | By

Poll: Voters weigh in on prison overcrowding

Mixed support from Governor Jerry Brown's plans.

In somewhat traditional California fashion, it appears that while voters support Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to send prison inmates to the counties to alleviate prison overcrowding, they do not want to pay to implement the plan. According to a new Field Poll released this morning:

By a 51% to 37% margin voters back Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to comply with the High Court’s ruling by transferring lower-risk inmates from state prisons to local county jails and other community-based facilities.

However, voters do not believe that state taxes should have to be raised or that the temporary tax increases enacted by the state several years ago extended to pay for this transfer.

The same poll found that a large majority of Californians support reforming Three Strikes, which sends repeat offenders to prison for lengthy periods, up to life in prison (sometimes for low-level offenses like shoplifting). According to the poll, three in four voters “say they now agree that the state’s ‘three strikes’ law should be modified to give judges and juries more discretion in deciding the sentences given to persons convicted of a third felony as a way to ease prison overcrowding.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Community, Budget, Prison Overcrowding, Realignment, Three Strikes
June 3, 2011 | 9:57 AM | By

Prison overcrowding: What’s the backup plan?

US Supreme Court

A new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California seems to show a tough (but not impossible) road for Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to extend and increase taxes to help alleviate some of the state’s fiscal problems. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

According to the poll, 62 percent of likely voters said they want a special election, up 6 percentage points from April and 11 percentage points from March. However, 46 percent of likely voters said they supported the taxes while 48 percent said they opposed them.

According to an analyst interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, the tax measures need to be polling in the 60s–at least 12 points higher than now–to have any prayer of passing if they’re put on the ballot. But Brown does not seem deterred–he’s pledged to fulfill his campaign promise of letting voters decide whether they want to tax themselves and save certain functions of state government, or not tax themselves and absorb cuts.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Budget, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Jerry Brown, Prison Overcrowding, Realignment, US Supreme Court
June 2, 2011 | 1:58 PM | By

Why some reformers embrace crisis

Josh Dimauro

With the US Supreme Court ruling that California must relieve overcrowding in its prison system, the current plan embraced by Governor Jerry Brown and his administration is to send thousands of prison inmates to county jails to serve their sentences. Today, a piece by the excellent reporter Justine Sharrock over at New America Media points out that some counties do not seem ready to accept those inmates. Primarily, Sharrock points to “the Los Angeles problem:”

Of all the counties, Los Angeles County will play the most significant role in the realignment program, since one-third, or nearly 57,000, California state prisoners originate from that area.

L.A. County jails, which house an estimated 19,500 inmates daily, have 5,000 unused beds. The Pitchess Detention Center north of Santa Clarita, for example, houses only two inmates. (Those two inmates serve to maintain the jail’s open status, to avoid any upgrades that would be required if the jail were to close and reopen.)

If realignment goes through, certain counties, like Los Angles, Kern, and San Diego, will likely face a huge influx of inmates. And, Sharrock reports, conditions in LA jails are questionable as it is–meaning, if inmates were in overcrowded, sub-constitutional conditions in prison, nothing better awaits them at the county level.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Courts, Budget, Prison Overcrowding, Realignment