Sasha Abramsky takes a look at the criminal justice lobbying network in a new report.
In 2012, a big shift will hit California’s electoral system: open primaries. Open primaries, brought in by voters through 2010′s Proposition 14, will allow the top two vote-getters in any primary for state office to advance to the general election, which means we could see districts with two Republicans or two Democrats competing in a general election. California’s biggest lobbying groups, among them some of the biggest law enforcement groups in the country, are grappling with what this new system will mean to them, in a state that’s undergoing a shift in how the public views our traditionally tough-on-crime approach. I sat down with Sasha Abramsky, a reporter for the Nation, Rolling Stone, and other publications, to talk about how this change might play out. Abramsky published a report earlier this week with the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice called “Sacramento’s K-Street Lobbyists: The criminal justice inner circle.” In that piece, Abramsky analyzed the influence of California’s largest criminal justice lobbys, like the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), and how they’re approaching this shift in electoral politics.
Don Novey, former longtime president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, is expected in a Sacramento bankruptcy court Thursday morning. Filings with the US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of California show that Novey and his wife, Carol, began Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceedings in May.
In 1986, California signed its first modern contract with a private prison company, opening a Community Correctional Facility called Hidden Valley Ranch in La Honda. Over the next two decades, the CCF project expanded, and there are currently at least nine CCFs in the state, generally housing low-level state prisoners. The CCFs represent private prison companies’ greatest inroad into California’s correctional scene to date. While state like Texas and Florida, other states with large prison populations have embraced private facilities, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association has consistently opposed any kind of privatization, keeping their role in the state minimal. Now, CCFs–both private and locally owned–are reportedly 
Private prisons are making subtle advances into California–albeit via the back roads. This week, an initial group of California inmates arrived at GEO Group’s North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin, Michigan–part of a larger strategy initiated by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to relieve some of the overcrowding in California’s prisons.