A CASE FOR CALIFORNIA SENTENCING REFORM

Few cases illustrate the senseless cruelty of California's sentencing
laws than the case of Annette Imboden. In September 1998, the former
mental patient with a history of drug abuse was given a life sentence
for stealing from family friends.

At the time of her offense, Annette had relapsed into a
depression-driven cocaine binge that resulted from a broken romance.

Annette was sentenced under California's rigidly constructed "three
strikes" law because of a prior instance of burglary and check fraud.

Despite pleadings for leniency from her victims, the sentencing judge
imposed, what he acknowledged was an unjust sentence, lamenting that
his "hands were tied." At age 39, she was carried from the court room
despondent and sobbing, and sent to the California Department of
Corrections, where, absent a gubernatorial pardon, she will spend
much of the next decade.

Annette is now confined in California's violent overcrowded prison
system, where she engages in a daily struggle to survive.

In October 2006, Annette was nearly beaten to death after four women
gang members viciously beat her with padlocks stuffed in socks and
then attempted to sodomize her with a broom handle when she refused
their demand for $200. In prison jargon it's called "paying rent" and
is a typical technique employed by prison gangs to extort money from
vulnerable inmates.

While recovering from her injuries, Annette is housed in a
23-hour-a-day protective custody cell where she has no access to
counseling or other supports - ironically, the same treatment imposed
on her attackers.

Once she recovers and is returned to the prison yard, her ordeal will
begin again.

To the politicians and prison lobbyists responsible for the state's
sentencing policies, the plight of inmates such as Annette Imboden is
irrelevant. Since the passage of the 1978 determinate-sentencing law,
the state's political leaders and prison interest groups have engaged
in a frenzied effort to mandate ever harsher penalties without regard
to the long-term effects on the prison system or the inmates.

With the Legislature passing more than 1,000 new sentencing
enhancement laws, California's prison population exploded from 21,647
in 1980 to 170,475 today.

As crowding increased and rehabilitation programs were eliminated,
prison conditions deteriorated. The state now faces numerous lawsuits
over prison conditions that will cost taxpayers billions if policies
remain in place.

For more than 15 years, independent analysts, including the
nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office and Little Hoover
Commission, have urged sentencing reform through the creation of a
sentencing commission. Sentencing commissions are independent
administrative bodies comprised of legislative, executive, and/or
judicial branch appointees charged with setting sentencing standards
while insulated from the political pressures of grandstanding
politicians and powerful prison lobbies.

By operating free from political influences, sentencing commissions
institute fair and rational sentencing policies that establish
sentencing durations based on the seriousness of the crime and the
convicts' threat to the community.

In addition to eliminating the injustices imposed on individuals such
as Annette Imboden, a California sentencing commission could address
the problem of statewide sentencing disparities. Under sentencing
practices California counties impose prison sentences at vastly
different rates.

For example, Santa Barbara County's prison commitment rate in 2005
was 330 per 1,000 felony arrests; more than triple Sacramento
County's rate of 108 per 1000 felony arrests.

If all counties sentenced felons at Sacramento County's rate (a
conservative jurisdiction), California's prison population would be
reduced by 20,000, saving $1.4 billion.

The savings resulting from eliminating these county-based sentencing
disparities could then be reinvested to improve the quality and
intensity of county-based correctional options such as probation.

Since 1990, the state Legislature has attempted to create a
sentencing commission on three separate occasions only to have it
vetoed once by Gov. George Deukmejian and twice by Gov. Pete Wilson.
With the overcrowding and the state's prison system on the verge of
collapse, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has now proposed establishing
such a body. Let us hope that the current crisis-driven initiative
will usher in an era of responsible stewardship of the state's
criminal-justice system that has long been absent in Sacramento.