LOS ANGELES — July 20, 2011 — Faced with a court mandate to reduce overcrowding in California prisons, a majority of the state’s voters favor shorter sentences for some offenders rather than raising taxes or cutting services such as education or health care to pay for new prison construction or prisoner relocation, according to a new USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/Los Angeles Times Poll.
In May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California must release more than 33,000 inmates to ease prison overcrowding. By a 50-point margin, California voters oppose increasing taxes to pay for new prison construction or to send inmates to other states. About 73 percent of voters oppose increasing taxes to build new prisons or relocate prisoners — including a majority of self-identified Democratic, Independent and Republican voters — compared to 23 percent of voters in favor.
“In these tough economic times, voters expect their politicians to make spending priorities just like their families do, and right now, spending more money on prisons is not a high priority for Californians. When it comes to prisons, voters are looking for solutions that don’t raise taxes or take money from other priorities like education,” said Linda DiVall, president of American Viewpoint, a Republican polling firm that conducted the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll with Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner
Prisons: Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics, and Evan Halper, Sacramento Bureau Chief from the Los Angeles Times, discuss how the public feels about what to do about the current prison system. For more video analysis from USC and the Los Angeles Times, visit the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll Web site http://dornsife.usc.edu/poll
When presented with a series of measures to ease overcrowding in California prisons, a majority of the state’s voters said they favor reducing life sentences for third-strike offenders convicted of property crimes, such as burglary, auto theft or shoplifting.
Sixty-two percent favor reducing life sentences for property crime offenders convicted under California’s “three strikes” law, and 31 percent favor it “strongly.” Overall, 34 percent of voters opposed reducing life sentences for third-strike offenders.
“Californians prefer reducing sentences for certain non-violent offenders as the best alternative to spending cuts and tax increases,” said Stan Greenberg, CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. “That a smaller percentage ‘strongly’ favor early release suggests these are tough choices made in the context of the state economy and the court mandate to reduce California prison populations within the next two years.”
By a double-digit margin, White voters were more likely than Latino voters to support reducing life sentences for property crime offenders. Sixty-four percent of White voters support reducing sentences for property crime offenders convicted under the “three-strikes” law, and 33 percent opposed. Latino voters were more evenly split: 50 percent supported reducing life sentences and 45 percent opposed.
Latino voters were also less likely than White voters to support releasing low-level nonviolent offenders from prison early, though a majority of both groups and voters overall said they were in favor of the measure to help reduce the prison population.
Overall, 69 percent of California voters support early release of non-violent offenders, with 33 percent favoring it “strongly.” This includes 71 percent of White voters, 78 percent of Black voters, 69 percent of Asian American voters, and 59 percent of Latino voters. Twenty-eight percent of voters oppose early release of low-level non-violent offenders.
Californians across party lines oppose cutting government services to help pay for measures that would ease prison overcrowding. Overall, 84 percent of voters oppose cutting government services to pay for prisons, including 87 percent of self-identified Democrats, 82 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Independent voters.
A video of poll experts discussing these results is available on the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll Web site, http://dornsife.usc.edu/poll
May 24, 2011 
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.
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.
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.
