Senator Mark Leno explained during Monday's online Senate Town Hall Meeting that the lawmakers can sometimes jump the 2/3 vote requirement hurdle and actually pass reform bills. However, due to a lack of oversight, it can take years for the changes in laws to be enforced. Then, Senator Steinberg described the financial consequences brought about as a result of harsh laws such as Three Strikes and Jessica's Law. These are but two laws foisted upon us by special interests via the initiative process which had no funding source, meaning that they are paid for from education, human services or some other existing program.
Implementation of Three Strikes and Jessica's Law and now Prop 9 are certainly not for free and have already driven up the cost of corrections from 5.4% to 11% in just seven years, which doubled the percentage of spending in the General Fund alone. Add to these costs the millions that will be required to bring California into compliance with the hysterical federal Adam Walsh Act and it is no surprise that this $10 billion expense is still growing. Senator Steinberg is correct when he points out that such extravagant laws have contributed greatly to our meltdown. Leno says that the cost of incarcerating a prisoner under 50 years old is $49,000, but the cost doubles after the age of 50 and triples after the age of 60, which means that many elderly prisoners cost upward of $150,000 a year. Leno says that 70% of this outlay is in employment costs alone.
Imagine, an entire industry built for the purpose of punishing sick people. I. for one, am ashamed and outraged that this is being done in my name,with my precious tax dollars. I am appalled that my legislature is in total gridlock due to the malicious will of the minority party who caused the prison overcrowding crisis and refuses to remedy it other than possibly agreeing to a miniscule 12% - 15% cut which will be decided this week. There should be at least a 50% cut to Corrections, a black hole of waste that is providing few valuable services and has devolved into more of a criminal college where nobody is coming out "corrected."
See this important, eye-opening webcast about the budget crisis here.
http://media.senate.ca.gov/townhall090615.
Around the 1 hour 20 minute mark (1:20), the two senators address one of the questions I submitted to them during the broadcast, but they don't really directly answer it. I asked, "When will prisoner releases begin and why haven't they already started considering there are about 80,000 non violent people incarcerated for minor technical parole violations?"
After all, the elderly and disabled have already received an 8.5% cut in income and had all their dental services eliminated, as if teeth aren't necessary to good health or frail people being able to chew their food. It is common sense that cuts to the poor, which make bad situations worse, almost always result in a rise in crime. But common sense doesn't rule governments, organized groups and the people they put into office make the decisions for everyone. The weakest voting groups are taking the most serious cuts. After all, the elderly and disabled aren't organized well enough to elect or recall a politician, so they can take away their food and utility money, cause them to go homeless, and there won't be much of a public outcry about such unwise public safety endangerment at all.
But any move that would interfere with the job security and a salary of a prison guard has yet to be implemented. This supremacy is because the guards' union, CCPOA, can elect or recall politicians and have already put many of the lawmakers into power to serve their wants and needs. The teachers and nurses are far bigger voting lobbies, but they aren't as agressive, or generous to the politicians, so the bullies rule the day with very little public outcry from those who should be out posting at the news sites voicing opposition.
Today's prison guards are paid more than university-level professors with years of education. About $40 million per month in overtime pay alone is being spent for guards to stand over sick prisoners who can't swat a fly off their noses. This is in addition to their regular pay to just sit or stand at the door for 24 hours a day on four shifts . Very little of these billions are actually going to benefit or heal the prisoners, which would be a wise thing to do since they are almost all going to be eventually released into our neighborhoods. The goal should be to return them better off instead of broken in mind, body and spirit but that is far from the reality of what is actually taking place.
This dysfunction that Senator Leno mentions of a years-long delay in actually enforcing changed policies, even when they would remedy crisis situations, has certainly been true in the case of AB 1539, This urgent bill was passed into law in 2007 for the compassionate release of terminally ill and permanently medically incapacitated prisoners. It took 15 years of painful struggle to get both parties to agree upon and a Governor to sign this desperately needed bill which would reduce prison overcrowding and medical costs. People died and are still dying cruel deaths in overcrowded prisons long past the time when they could be sent home to spend their final days with their families or to skilled nursing facilities which would cost far less than having them die in prison under costly heavy guard.
Additionally, our prisons are full of quadriplegics such as Steven Martinez (see his parent's side of the story and statement of his attorney at the links to the right of this article) and of terminally ill prisoners such as Mark Grangetto, whose torture case I have been writing about for years as it travels through the back-logged and corrupt courts. There are prisoners who cannot care for themselves dying from cancer, AIDS and every disease known to man. I have witnessed guards just standing there with their batons and pepper spray in readiness for the unlikely event that one of these dying, pathetic people might make any move at all. It's revolting and beyond ludicrous for our education and human services dollars to be wasted in this manner.
From $1-$2 billion of taxpayer dollars have been unnecessarily spent since 2007 alone to continue to punish people who meet the standards for a compassionate release or more technically, a recall of sentence. Arrogant attitudes, political posturing and unbearable incompetence by individuals in CDCr and the Board of Prison Terms, which lawyers say exceed their authority, are forcing taxpayers to pay an extravagant price for public safety services that we're not even getting. The bungling of physicians who couldn't get a job anywhere else actually caused permanent harm to many of the inmates, which is why more than 100 doctors were fired. The violence in the mismanaged prisons and the state's failure to protect the inmates in over-crowded environments have also resulted in many life-long disabilities. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in lawsuit settlements which were preventable if only the state had been following and enforcing their own laws. Still, many of these problems continue today. Why?
Attorney General Jerry Brown fights the reforms and healing programs as well as defying court orders mandated by the three judge panel and almost never prosecutes those whose deliberate indifference resulted in a death or permanent disability. The careless double celling policy, continual lockdowns in cells the size of a small bathroom where they put two men 23 hours a day, one of whom might be severely mentally ill, has caused untold maiming and deaths to occur. Some of this carnage would be stopped if the new law AB1539 were being enforced because it would reduce the over-crowding and free up space for healthier inmates.
The lawmakers from both parties passed AB 1539 for good reasons, to remedy the present crisis, and yet two years later state employees still think that they have the jurisdiction to deny compassionate releases when it is now up to the judges. CDCr administrators are doing everything in their power to stop such releases for the purpose of maintaining the human bondage industry and no one is calling them on these unlawful practices.
Steven Martinez' mother, Norma, says that "the decision to deny a compassionate release to my paralyzed son was made by Suzane Hubbard. She says she was acting on behalf of Matthew Cate." The law clearly states that only a judge can make the final determination of whether or not an inmate should be released. Both Hubbard and Cate have no jurisdiction to deny release. Martinez fits the criteria of AB1539 by being totally unable to care for himself. Both state administrators are violating the law by making such a denial which is out of their purview. Even in the Martinez case, where it is so clearly evident with him being paralyzed, the administrators continue their unlawful arrogance and still ignore that AB 1539 was passed just to remedy such an expensive and inhumane situation. How can they sleep at night?
Martinez' father is a retired fireman and he comes from a solid, loving home. Even the victim in his case has joined his release campaign. Martinez has three small children who are being disallowed regular visits with their father, a cruel practice taking place in all the prison hospitals. These three children would benefit from having him in the home because he still has his voice and they love him. There are medical providers who will care for Martinez, saving the taxpayers the expense of upwards of a million dollars just for this one prisoner. The same is true in the Grangetto case, yet the state officials refuse to obey the law and many physicians are being threatened for making compassionate release recommendations.
Taxpayers should demand that every recall of sentence denied since 2007 is immediately reviewed and that the Director of the Department of Corrections and the Secretary of the Agency, Matthew Cate, be informed and held accountable for implementing the changes that this law brought into effect. AB 1539 is still being ignored at great fiscal and humanitarian expense for political reasons which all concerned, should find unacceptable.
The solution to these problems is not to build more prisons but to release those who shouldn't be there in the first place. We as taxpayers are being sold a "security service" which we can't afford and which provides no security. And we're paying for it with actual crime prevention dollars because that's why we have human services and education, to reduce crime. No matter how hard anyone tries, a sick person cannot be punished into being well. It is very clear that the purpose of prisons is to punish sick people. Where is the public outcry about laws not being followed by those we put into power?
Please check out the slideshow below and the links to the far right for more videos and articles on this topic.
Comments
The Criminal Mind Never Sleeps!
America Should Focus On More Rights for the Victims and Fewer Rights for Criminals,
Is What Our Judicial System Should Be Based On!
Treating criminals like they were in a Sunday school for orphans and keep letting them turn prisons and courtroom into their personal playgrounds are not going to keep Correctional Facilities and society safe…
Nor Can We Keep Avoiding Sex-Offenders and Pedophiles prancing around this country hiding behind their rights, when Ninety-Percent of Them Return To Prisons in One/ Three Years Committing the Same Crimes
We now have over 600-thousand of these sex offenders in the United States and sadly, the police data bases cannot locate nor do they know where approximately 100,000 of them are located.
I do believe we keep better track of library books then we do these
Sex-offenders and Pedophiles in this county-
Author John J. Pecchio
Has A Website www.johnpecchio.com Filled With Personal Thoughts On Ou
Murderers and sex offenders have the lowest recidivism rate according to the U.S. Department of Justice. So why not give them a second chance. After all, the only sex offenders we need to really worry about are:
1. The VIOLENT rapist.
2. Those who did NOT KNOW their victim.
3. The REPEAT offender.
We could save BILLIONS more.
Here are some studies to contemplate. One other point. The sex offender laws as they are written today are but "feel good laws," that protect no one, but endangers every child and the whole of our society and at a very wasteful cost to the tax payers.
Copy and past the link into your browser if they don't work by clicking.
Laws of all kind MUST be "Evidence Based Researched." All these feel good sex offender laws are "emotional, feel good" based without regard to evidence based research. They do more harm than good.
Studys
Go to cfcoklahomadotorg, under "News Forum, skroll to the bottom of page.
The hurrier I get, the behinder I go. Sorry, I forgot to post the U.S. Department of Justice Recidivist rates according to crime.
* Released prisoners with the highest rearrest rates were robbers (70.2%),
burglars (74.0%),
larcenists (74.6%),
motor vehicle thieves (78.8%),
those in prison for possessing or selling stolen property (77.4%), and those in prison for possessing, using, or selling illegal weapons (70.2%).
* Within 3 years, 2.5% of released rapists were arrested for another rape,
and 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for homicide.
John J. Pecchio, why not tell the truth instead of lies. Please provide the data source that you used to state the following, "Nor Can We Keep Avoiding Sex-Offenders and Pedophiles prancing around this country hiding behind their rights, when Ninety-Percent of Them Return To Prisons in One/ Three Years Committing the Same Crimes."
I challenge you to post your source. You can not do so sine you lied.
I also looked at your web site and it is clear that you are one of those radicals that would like to see our constitution and bill of rights abolished.
Databases of convicted sex offenders is not protecting children. How about the people on these data bases who haven't ever re offended, their crimes were 20 years ago and people like you want to hound them to death. How about truth in the data bases that show the date of the crime. No, never give information that might be mitigating.
The purpose of prisons is to punish people for their crimes against society. Get over it. People in prison deserve to be there and you need to accept that.
Sex offenders have the lowest recidivism rates of all categories, less than 5% and often for other types of crimes according to the Bureau of Justice.
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/rsorp94pr.htm
Here are the facts about sex offenders and some of the lies told by the politicians who used a Republican voting machine to force this expensive law upon us which has destroyed more families than it has ever helped and protected not one child.
www.1union1.com/Jessicaslaw...Noway.htm
I'll suggest something that would really save money in the prisons = no toilet paper at all. Install bathroom bidet sprayers in all the toilets and all they'll need is a towel to dry off. It's cleaner, cheaper (yes for those who just have to object to everything water is cheaper than toilet paper!), it's better for the environment and it has health benefits like lessening hemorrhoids which would save even more money. After they try it, like most people, they will like it. As Dr. Oz said on Oprah: "if you had pee or poop on your hand, you wouldn't wipe it off with paper, would you? You'd wash it off" This is a logical, doable and simple way to save allot of money and actually improve the prisoners living standards. But of course like all new ideas people will find countless silly and inane objections, that is the way of things. Theses sprayers are available at www.bathroomsprayers.com I installed mine myself, easy.
Great Article Ms. Bird!!! Straight to the point and factual.
What purpose does it serve to keep the aged, feeble and dying in a prison environment? It does not do anything to protect the public. These people need to be in a hospital. And NO these people don't go prancing around and many are violated on technical unrelated minor offenses. It's so easy to spread lies to sway to support ones biases. The truth is the prison system is horrendous and unless you've been there you cannot honestly judge. To make a mockery of inmates and talk like they are having a good time is irresponsible and vicious. Many are in for minor offenses. Taxpayers money is being wasted and families are being victimized by an unjust system that feeds off of taxpayers money
Unreasonably long sentences; unjustly denying parole for serious offenders who have served their time and are not, or no longer are, dangerous, replacing mental hospitals with prison time; and the broken, overwhelmed parole system is ruining salvage lives, not making us safer, and is costing is %%%%%%%%!
It is so nice to see how partial you are for removing the article I sent in showing how inmates are receving rehabilitation in State prisons, and how Correctional officers are receiving 4 months of skilled academy, prior to being sent to their assigned prison. They also have to acquire 53 hours of specilaized training in order to keep their State Peace Officer status.
Chedderboy...you beat me to it, thanks.
recidivism to jail may not be an issue for sex offenders, it is that they get better at hiding their crimes and do not get caught.
Also, cancer and HIV/AIDS are currently categorized as chronic illnesses, not terminal illnesses. I would possibly consider a compassionate release to prisoners with a prognosis of 6 months or less rather than a diagnosis.
I say let the inmates stationed all over conservation camps out of the prison system afterall they are there to help the community and are the very low offenders.
Great article Ms Bird. I agree with it. AB1539, Compassionate Release has been signed into law for around two years. Why hasn't it been put to use. The answer is that it makes money for the prisons and the guards. They get paid very nice money for watching over people who have no chance at recovery or meaningful life. Let them go home to their families or if not that a long term care facility. They are no threat to anyone, for goodness sake!
Release those who are frail,sick & dying to their families,who want them in their last days~~too many have died due to State incompetance & greed!! A gross injustice of the highest,how inmates are treated !! Break down the walls !!
It sounds like people are dumping on the wrong professions to me. The officers don't make these policies and procedures, the judges and lawmakers do. The people catching the flack are doing what administrators are telling them to do. I don't believe the CCPOA has near the power you state they do or Arnold would still be making movies instead of leading this state down the toilet. He has hated and blamed unions from day one.
i agree with john 100%. not once does any of the advocates mention how the victims or surviors of the victims are doing. how would they, the victims, feel or be able to functin in the community knowing that their attacker is out on the loose, again? especially if it was a serial rapist or violent rapist!!! i agree with CHEDDARBOY 100% also. they are where most of them want to be anyhow, thats why our prisons are so over crowded in the first place. its not the officers or runion or whatevers fault they are there or repeats. when they made the choice to do their crime they gave up all rights to a 'normal' life. what part are the families not understanding. especially like the publisher who threatened her family for not lying for her son when he was going to court. your family did the right thing by telling the truth
If the prisons were making a HUGH amount of money, They wouldn't be filling to the brim, over flowing with wrongfully accused and convicted men, women and CHILDREN.... Including My Own Minor Son. If the Prison Systems was making HUGH amounts of PROFITS... They wouldn't be exspanding... But THEY ARE exspanding, filling up with Men, Women and our CHILDREN, and they are over flowing with Wrongfully Accused and Convicted Juveniles.... The corruption in the injustice systems underminds this Once Great Nation Known As America....
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