PD Editorial: Curbing the high cost of three strikes

Published: Monday, July 11, 2011 at 3:00 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, July 8, 2011 at 1:13 p.m.

About one in every four California inmates is serving a sentence under the nation's most stringent repeat-offender law.

California is the only state that metes out life sentences for writing a bad check, trying to pry open the door of a church food pantry, stealing a jack from a tow truck and other nonviolent offenses that might not otherwise result in any jail time. In some three-strikes cases, inmates committed all their offenses on a single day. While these tend to be more serious crimes, that hardly fits the career-criminal profile offered as justification for the law.

It's little wonder that California is under a federal court order, affirmed by a decidedly conservative U.S. Supreme Court, to release thousands of inmates to relieve crowding in state prisons.

The first step will be moving some offenders to county jails. That will happen this fall. Another step should be revising three strikes to ensure that life sentences are meted out only for serious and violent felonies.

Lawyers at Stanford University's Three Strikes Project are drafting such an initiative, with an eye on the 2012 ballot.

And they may have allies from the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the politically powerful prison guards union that fought past efforts to better target the three strikes law, including a ballot initiative in 2004. “We'd be open to reasonable modifications,” Jevaughn Baker, a union spokesman, told the San Jose Mercury News. “We have to have an efficient system.”

Under three strikes, the penalty doubles for a second conviction for an offense designated as serious or violent, and a sentence of 25-years-to-life is imposed for any subsequent felony, no matter how minor. Almost 9,000 inmates are serving life sentences on three-strikes convictions, and 32,000 others are two-strikers.

In a state that spends $50,000 per inmate annually — up from $20,000 when three strikes was adopted — the cost of enhanced sentences is huge. In 2009, state auditors estimated that taxpayers would spend an extra $19.2 billion over the duration of incarceration for the three-strikes inmates then in custody.

The law's history is closely entwined with Sonoma County. Before the 1993 kidnapping and murder of Polly Klaas, a 12-year-old Petaluma girl, by a parolee with a lengthy criminal record, three strikes legislation was bogged down in Sacramento, and an initiative campaign wasn't making much progress either. Both passed with a boost from Marc Klaas, the slain girl's father, who later became an outspoken opponent of three strikes.

Another Sonoma County case resulted in a state Supreme Court decision in 1996 that gave trial judges discretion, previously enjoyed only by prosecutors, to disregard prior convictions and reduce sentences in the interests of justice.

The exponential costs of three strikes were one reason that it was going nowhere before the Polly Klaas case. As the costs have mounted, political leaders have ducked for cover, afraid of being labeled as soft on crime.

Now, after years of state budget deficits and facing court orders to address prison crowding, voters should pass a new initiative to restrict three strikes to career criminals and the most serious crimes.

All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20110711/OPINION/110709546?p=all&tc=pgall

Join "Moms United" and Students For Sensible Drug Policy

On June 18th  "Moms United To End The War On Drugs" says NO MORE DRUG WAR

"Community Solutions" to the failed WAR ON DRUGS!

- A community response to the 40-year War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration - Get educated, empowered and entertained!

Saturday, June 18 · 1:00pm -  midnight

Chuco's Justice Center

1137 East Redondo Boulevard

Inglewood, California

A New PATH /Los Angeles is co-sponsoring with SSDP an all day festival SATURDAY JUNE 18TH; collaborating with 27 other drug war activist and advocacy groups to present 2 panels of speakers, poetry readings, candlelight vigil – ending the evening with live music till midnight!

About A New PATH (Parents for Addiction... Healing and Treatment) -

A New PATH works to reduce the stigma associated with addictive illness through education and compassionate support, and to advocate for therapeutic rather than punitive drug policies. We are anon-profit advocacy organization of parents, concerned citizens, individuals in recovery, healthcare professionals and community leaders working together to educate the public, media and decision makers about the true nature of the disease of addiction, reduce the harms of current drug laws and expand access to treatment services.

We advocate ending discriminatory drug policies that serve as roadblocks to recovery. We are bringing focus to our country's failed drug policies and the havoc they have wreaked on our families in our current campaign "Moms United to End the War on Drugs." We are leading a growing national movement dedicated to stopping the violence, mass incarceration and overdose deaths that are the result of current punitive and discriminatory drug policies. We started our movement in 2000 with our executive director Gretchen Bergman chairing the groundbreaking "Treatment instead of Incarceration" Prop 36 campaign.

Please email me if you need more information,
Julia Negron
Regional Director
A New PATH - Los Angeles
anewpathla@gmail.com

Time for California to tackle prison overcrowding

      May 24, 2011        Editorial

With the U.S. Supreme Court upholding an order to reduce the state's inmate population, the Legislature should take a first step by creating a panel to revise sentencing guidelines.

 

Gov. Jerry Brown is a reluctant prison reformer; in his former job as attorney general, he fought hard to stave off a federal court order requiring the state to reduce its inmate population. But with Monday's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding that order, Brown can't put off the big decisions anymore — and neither can the Legislature, which has been ignoring the prison problem for decades.

Perhaps because he understood the weakness of his own case, Brown seems to have been prepared for Monday's ruling in Brown vs. Plata, in which a 5-4 Supreme Court majority agreed that California's prison conditions were so bad that they violated the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Earlier this year he released a proposal for transferring thousands of inmates from state prisons to county jails, and last month he signed a bill, AB 109, to accomplish that. But that may not suffice.

 

At last count there were 142,000 inmates in California prisons, which are so overcrowded that some prisoners must be housed collectively in gymnasiums or alone in phone-booth-sized cages. Under the order upheld by the Supreme Court, the state must reduce its inmate population to 137.5% of the system's capacity — meaning about 110,000 — within two years.

Brown's plan to shift nonviolent offenders to county facilities is a partial solution. But the state would have to pay counties to take its prisoners, so the plan requires the Legislature, and ultimately voters, to approve an extension of the 2009 temporary tax hikes to fund the transfers. Those taxes are a subject of fierce debate as lawmakers bicker over closing the state's yawning multibillion-dollar deficit. Moreover, as it stands now, Brown's plan would cut the state inmate population by about 30,000 within three years, one year later than the federal order requires.

In his dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. argued histrionically that California was being mandated to release "the equivalent of three Army divisions" of criminals onto its streets; similarly, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that "terrible things are sure to happen as a consequence of this outrageous order." But the truth is that experts have been suggesting responsible ways to ease prison overcrowding for years. One way is to create an independent panel to revise the state's haphazard sentencing guidelines, which all too often result in excessive terms that worsen overcrowding. In other states, sentencing commissions have lengthened penalties for truly dangerous felons while finding alternative punishments for minor offenders.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed such a commission, but he couldn't get the Legislature to go along. Maybe the threat of wide-scale prisoner releases can finally scare our lawmakers straight.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-prisons-20110524,0,1623381.story

Supreme Court backs cuts in California prison population

Supreme Court backs cuts in California prison population | abc7news.com

abclocal.go.com 

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday endorsed a court order requiring California to cut its prison population by thousands of inmates to improve health care for those who remain behind bars.

The court said in a 5-4 decision that the reduction is "required by the Constitution" to correct longstanding violations of inmates' rights.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, a California native, wrote the majority opinion, in which he included photos of severe overcrowding. The court's four Democratic appointees joined with Kennedy.

"The violations have persisted for years. They remain uncorrected," Kennedy said.

Justice Antonin Scalia said in dissent that the court order is "perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation's history." Scalia, reading his dissent aloud Monday, said it would require the release of "the staggering number of 46,000 convicted felons." Justice Clarence Thomas joined Scalia's opinion, while Justice Samuel Alito wrote a separate dissent for himself and Chief Justice John Roberts.

The case revolves around inadequate mental and physical health care in a state prison system that in 2009 averaged nearly a death a week that might have been prevented or delayed with better medical care.

The state's 33 adult prisons hold more than 142,000 inmates in its 33 adult prisons. The facilities were designed to hold about 80,000.  But the state has protested a court order to cut the population cut to around 110,000 inmates within two years.

(Copyright ©2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)