BUDGET CRISIS FORCES CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR TO CONSIDER EARLY RELEASES, OTHER
PRISON MEASURES

California Gov. Gray Davis (D) never met a prison-building program or
"tough on crime" bill he didn't like, but now, faced with a $35 billion
state budget deficit, he is being forced to consider measures that could
begin to pare down the state's mammoth prison budget -- and free some
prisoners. With California's budget deficit greater than those of the other
49 states combined, Davis is finding that there are no sacred cows when it
comes to budgets -- especially when it's a question of prisons or health
care, prisons or education, prisons or social services.

As recently as last month, when he proposed mid-year budget cuts, Davis had
spared the prisons, instead opting for cutting dental care for adult
Medi-Cal clients, cost of living increases for the disabled, and child care
subsidies for welfare graduates. Davis proposed $10.2 billion in cuts, but
the California Department of Corrections (CDC) accounted for only 0.1% of them.

Davis said he would not imperil public safety to balance the budget. The
"tough on crime" mantra has long been successful in California politics --
Republican governors Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson are past masters of the
politics of fear -- and Gray's policies, at least, are in the pocket of the
California prison guards' association, whose interests are self-evident and
whose free-spending ways have made it the largest special interest campaign
contributor in state politics in recent years. But people who aren't prison
guards are beginning to grumble.

Advocates for health care, schools, and other threatened social services
have started to raise a row over the sanctity of the prison budget. "The
idea that you're going to cut 400,000 to 500,000 people from getting health
insurance and not even examine corrections... is a little unconscionable,"
Iris Lav, deputy director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a
nonpartisan research organization in Washington, DC, told the Sacramento
Bee last month.

Demands for prison spending reductions are also coming from the
legislature. State Senate President Pro Tem John Burton and San Francisco
Assemblyman Mark Leno, both Democrats, told the San Francisco Chronicle
last week they have ideas designed to reduce spending by freeing nonviolent
prisoners. Leno, the incoming chairman of the Assembly Public Safety
Committee, said he wants to discuss releasing small-time drug offenders or
inmates locked up for petty parole violations. Burton also called for
reforming the state's severe parole system and added that perhaps inmates
over the age of 70 should be released -- there are 503 of them, costing the
state $13.4 million a year to house, according to the CDC.

Lightening the heavy hand of the parole board could also result in
substantial savings in tax dollars and human freedom. According to the CDC,
some 54% of all parolees return to prison, but only 10% are returned for
committing new crimes. In other words, the vast majority of parole
violators sent back to prison are doing time not for new criminal offenses,
but for failing to make a meeting, pass a drug test or report an address
change.

"Californians now have trade-offs to consider," Leno told the Chronicle.
"Do you want to have fewer subsidized day care slots? Do you want to have
more trauma centers? Do you want to see more seniors with their bag
lunches, or do you want to see more people in prisons?"

Prison spending is a big target. According to the CDC
(http://www.cdc.state.ca.us/factsht.htm), corrections cost $3.9 billion
this fiscal year and eats up almost 6% of the total budget. In addition,
the state has spent $5.7 billion on building new prisons since the late
1980s, with more needed by April 2004 if current trends continue. The state
spends an average of $26,690 per inmate per year to imprison the 161,000
people populating the California gulag - more than half of whom are
nonviolent offenders. Persons imprisoned for drug crimes constitute 23% of
all prisoners, according to the CDC. Simply by freeing all drug offenders,
California could save nearly a billion dollars in prison spending this
fiscal year alone.

But while there are signs Davis is beginning to hear the rumblings, that
isn't likely to happen. Davis has already taken a trembling first step
toward freeing prisoners to cut costs. He announced last week that he had
approved a plan to give some prison camp inmates two days credit for each
day served, thus freeing them earlier than anticipated and saving several
million dollars. But beholden as he is to the prison guards' union, he has
so far balked at other cost cutting measures, including shutting down San
Quentin Prison.

Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill, the legislature's financial adviser,
has suggested cutting the prison sentences of some nonviolent or elderly
prisoners, saying it could save the state hundreds of millions, but
according to the Mercury News, her proposal excludes drug offenders and
those with "Three Strikes" sentences.

Still, after two decades of untrammeled growth in California's prisons, the
era of corrections as a sacred cow appears to be coming to an end. Gray
Davis has taken what for him is a historic step - actually cutting a few
sentences - and the cries for reform of the state's over-the-top sentencing
policies are growing louder. As appears to be the case everywhere,
California politicians immune to pleas for social justice are responding to
the call of the budget cutter.