HARD TIME

California's Prisons In Crisis

High Price Of Broken Prisons

Tough Sentencing Creates Overcrowding That Endangers Inmates, Haunts Taxpayers

Nearly three decades after California cracked down on rising crime
rates with tougher sentencing laws, the bill is coming due for what
experts say has been one of the most ill-planned and flawed prison
expansions in the country.

At the heart of the problem is a simple but overpowering mismatch --
lawmakers and prosecutors sent far more criminals to prison than
Californians, ultimately, were willing to pay for. The result has
been such acute overcrowding that critical prison programs and
services are breaking down and require enormously expensive fixes.

On Thursday, a federal judge expressed shock at what he called the
neglect and "depravity" in parts of the prison health care system,
and ordered that a receiver take control. Court-ordered improvements
could send costs soaring in a program that already spends $1.1 billion a year.

Just weeks before, the Corrections Department opened Kern Valley
State Prison, built at a cost of $716 million and hailed as the last
of 22 new prisons in a $4.5 billion construction program. But days
later, the head of the agency, Roderick Q. Hickman, told The
Chronicle that Kern Valley could not possibly be the last prison,
because the system holds twice the number of inmates it was designed
for and is still adding more.

Hickman said taxpayers will also have to pay many millions of dollars
to upgrade older prisons and to comply with court orders demanding
the correction of conditions so abysmal that they violate inmates'
constitutional rights. With some of the highest costs per inmate, the
most violence, the highest rate of parolees going back to prison and
the worst crowding, California's corrections system is unlike any
other system in the United States.

"There's California and then there's the rest of the country," said
Michael Jacobson, the director of the Vera Institute of Justice in
New York and the former head of New York City's jail system. The
costs of the failures are now becoming clear:

- -- A major cause of overcrowding is a parole system that sends far
more released inmates back to prison than other states. Decisions by
corrections officials and politicians to de-emphasize rehabilitation
programs, lengthen parole periods and send violators back to prison
instead of giving them treatment have produced a return rate of about
60 percent, the nation's highest.

- -- The health care system is so neglected that up to 30 percent of
its physician jobs are vacant and some examination rooms don't even
have sinks. Once the federal court appoints a receiver, taxpayers
will have to pay the bill for hiring new staff and renovating
facilities. Meanwhile, longer sentences are producing an aging inmate
population with much more expensive medical needs.

- -- In a system that moves people in and out of prisons hundreds of
thousands of times a year, management is hobbled by an obsolete
information technology system. Officials say a modern computer
network that would cut costs, reduce errors and streamline management
is years away, and could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

California's problems are particularly striking because they run
counter to a broad national trend that is saving other states
millions of dollars while making citizens safer. If it could fix its
dysfunctional programs, experts say, a department that is projected
to spend $7.3 billion this fiscal year could save hundreds of
millions of dollars a year.

Even strict law-and-order states such as Mississippi and Louisiana
have embraced new models that involve elements like shorter
sentences, improved rehabilitation programs and more alternatives to
prison. Texas, which has a higher crime rate than California and
houses nearly as many inmates, puts only a fraction as many parole
violators back in prison.

"California has used policies that show no evidence of effectiveness;
all they show is high cost," said Jeremy Travis, president of the
John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. "The state is
the poster child for corrections policies that have no benefit to
public safety."

Hickman, in an interview, said of the parole system: "California,
quite frankly, is aberrant compared with anywhere else in the country."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Hickman on his first day in
office to be secretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency,
which operates the adult prisons and the much smaller juvenile
system. Hickman leaped into motion, declaring that he was determined
to overhaul the parole system because its problems were so central to
prisons being overstuffed with some 164,000 inmates.

This Friday, 20 months later, he reached a landmark when his agency
took the name Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as part of
the reorganization.

But some critics express deep disappointment that so little has been
accomplished. While they call for urgency, Hickman said that it could
take an additional 18 to 24 months to institute major new policies in
the areas suffering the gravest problems.

"My emphasis with adult corrections right now is evaluating the
prisons, evaluating the safety of the prisons, and then reconfiguring
the prisons within the mission we now have," he said.

The foundation of the current problems was laid in the late 1970s,
when Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, and Republican officials toughened
the state's criminal-justice policy.

As rising crime rates fed a law-and-order mood, Brown signed
legislation requiring judges to impose fixed sentences. Other laws
provided longer sentences for drug crimes, sex crimes and for
habitual offenders, reaching a peak with "three strikes" in 1994,
which mandated life sentences for some repeat offenders.

There were warnings that the state was unprepared. In 1979 the head
of the Corrections Department, Jiro Enomoto, warned that the prison
population could shoot out of control, to 27,000 by 1986 from about
20,000. By 1986 there were 54,000, and the state never caught up.

Today the prisons hold nearly twice the number of inmates they were
designed for, many having converted gyms and other areas into large
dormitories. The crowding has raised racial and other tensions, made
prisons more difficult to control, and hindered the limited treatment
and education programs that are provided.

"People are consistently coming out worse than they're going in,"
said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency in Oakland. He served on a blue-ribbon commission 15
years ago that examined the prisons and recommended major reforms,
most of which were ignored.

"It's getting worse," said Krisberg, "and it is harming public safety
because these people are going back in their communities."

Parole

Overcrowding is at the root of many of the system's failures, and
parole is at the root of the overcrowding. Experts blame the state's
policy of keeping most released inmates on parole for far longer
periods than other states and sending most of those who violate
parole back to prison, even for relatively minor offenses such as
missing meetings or failing drug tests.

So many parole violators are returned to prison that they make up
more than one third of all inmates. The Little Hoover Commission, an
independent state research body that provides policy recommendations,
estimated 18 months ago that the prisons spend about $1.5 billion a
year on parole violators and parolees who commit new crimes.

When inmates do make it back home, they are ill-prepared, either by
their stay in prison or parole programs, to hold down jobs or stay
out of trouble. The Little Hoover Commission found that 10 percent
are homeless, half are illiterate, as many as 80 percent are
unemployed. Eighty percent are drug users.

Experts say that spending money on treating or training parole
violators is more effective than sending them back to prison for
typical stays of 90 to 120 days.

Among parolees who met drug treatment goals at intensive residential
centers, only 15.5 percent returned to prison within a year of being
released, compared with more than 40 percent for all offenders, said
Sheldon Zhang, a professor of sociology at Cal State San Marcos.

But the Schwarzenegger administration has cut funding for some
programs and poorly planned others. One drug treatment program in a
prison, for example, performed poorly because it did not isolate the
inmates who were in treatment from the general prison population,
where they had access to drugs.

Two years ago, the state said new parole programs emphasizing
treatment and alternatives to prison for violators would cut the
prison population by 15, 000 inmates. But they were poorly designed,
in some cases sending drug violators to halfway houses with no drug
programs, and never even implemented properly. In April the state
stopped sending parole violators to these programs.

Parole violation cases have risen sharply this year, one of the
reasons the Corrections Department had to ask for an additional $207
million for a larger inmate base.

Health care

California already spends $1.1 billion a year on health care for
inmates -- a doubling in costs in just seven years -- but the level
of care is so poor that U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson has
said it violates inmates' constitutional right against cruel and
unusual punishment. Henderson, based in San Francisco, ruled Thursday
that a receiver would be appointed to order improvements.

No budget figures were discussed, but most expect costs to soar,
perhaps for years, because of the system's desperate needs. In a
separate area, mental health, a department consultant has estimated
it could cost $1.4 billion to meet the needs of the growing number of
mentally ill inmates.

Last year the department asked if the University of California, with
its big, highly regarded medical system, could take over management
of the prison health care programs. The university said no almost immediately.

"We just were not able to take on something of that scale," said Jeff
Hall, director of policy for the university's Division of Health Affairs.

High vacancy rates for doctors, nurses, psychiatrists and pharmacists
who must work under difficult conditions will require heavy spending
for recruitment, as well as bonuses and other incentives to attract
qualified people to some remote prison locations.

The department has also agreed to hire a new level of supervisors and
regional managers to oversee care, putting even more pressure on the budget.

Many doctors are furious, saying they are being unfairly blamed for
the problems when they have to work in deplorable conditions and are
badly overworked.

"The prisons were designed to incarcerate inmates," said Dr. Charles
Hooper, who works at the California State Prison, Sacramento. "They
were not designed to be the Mayo Clinic. They are essentially dungeons."

Hooper said that as many as half the inmates he sees for treatment
show up without charts. The frequent lockdowns at the prison, often a
result of tensions due to crowding, also disrupt proper treatment.

"It can be a fiasco at times," he said.

Health costs could also soar because of the rapidly rising number of
geriatric inmates. According to an internal Corrections Department
report, the total cost of an elderly inmate is three times that of a
younger one. New facilities for them could also require major renovations.

The number of inmates 60 and over, among the most expensive to care
for, nearly doubled in only six years, to 3,358 in 2004 from 1,781 in
1998, according to the department.

Health costs are also affected by the high level of violence in the
prisons. California's prisons have roughly twice the number of
violent incidents reported in Texas prisons and almost three times
the number in federal prisons, both of which have similar numbers of
inmates, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office.

Technology

Some people complain that the system seems immune to even the smallest changes.

David Warren, a volunteer chaplain and member of the Family Council,
which works with prison officials on behalf of inmate families, tells
of a prison dentist who was concerned that the toothbrushes he was
supplied were so hard that they were actually causing dental
problems. He sought to have the state order softer brushes. He
succeeded -- after 18 months.

"There is a mind-set that you have to see to understand," Warren said.

On a much broader level, the department's technology experts say it
will be years before the prisons have computer networks that will
enable them to keep track of the movements and needs of the inmates
and a staff of about 54, 000.

Only recently have prison officials been able to communicate through
the same e-mail system. Jeff Baldo, the head of the department's
information technology division, said state-of-the-art optic fibers
were installed in some prisons a decade ago, then left unused.

He said the department has one information technology specialist for
every 1,000 employees; typically, a state agency of its size would
need one technology expert for every 6 to 10 employees.

"I've never been in a place where you see this," Baldo said.

As a result, transferring large volumes of data from one prison to
another is nearly impossible, the department's experts said. Most
medical records are on paper, and when inmates are moved, their
records sometimes fail to catch up. Thus prison officials often have
to make decisions without complete data on inmates' records, medical
conditions and special needs.

The officials said that building an adequate computer system could
cost well over $100 million and take at least five more years.

"It could be less, but it also could be triple that amount," said
Robert Horel, the corrections agency's chief of fiscal programs. "It
doesn't take a very long term for the problems to grow when you're in
the dark as much as we are."

E-mail the writers at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com and
markmartin@sfchronicle.com.

Inmate population

The state's prisons held fewer than 21,000 inmates as late as 1978,
when the governor and Legislature began a 16-year push for tougher
sentencing laws.

By the time the first of 22 new prisons opened in 1984, the
population had already increased to 43,328.

1984: 43,328

2005: 163,717

Parole

California returns a higher percentage of parolees to prison than any
other state, often for violating a condition of parole such as
staying within a specified area.

2003 Inmates released to parole 1984: 24,711 2003: 115,424
Parolees returned to prison 1984: 11,409 2003: 78,053
Returned for violating conditions 1984: 7,421 2003: 62,377
Returned for new conviction 1984: 3,988 2003: 15,676

Source: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

California prisons opened since 1984

Designed - Current capacity - Population
California State Prison, Solano, Aug. '84 - 2,610 - 5,848
California State Prison, Sacramento, Oct. '86 - 2,008 - 2,967
Avenal State Prison, Jan. '87 (6 converted gyms) - 2,320 - 7,062
Mule Creek State Prison, June '87 - 1,700 - 3,614
Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, July '87 - 2,200 - 4,386
California State Prison, Corcoran, Feb. '88 - 2,916 - 4,867
Chuckawalla Valley State Prison, Dec. '88 - 1,738 - 3,700
Pelican Bay State Prison, Dec. '89 - 2,550 - 3,301
Central California Women's Facility, Oct. '90 - 2,004 - 3,109
Wasco State Prison, Feb. '91- 3,104 - 6,034
Calipatria State Prison, Jan. '92 - 2,208 - 4,151
California State Prison, Los Angeles County, Feb. '93 - 1,200 - 4,185
North Kern State Prison, Delano, April '93 - 2,892 - 5,028
Centinela State Prison, Oct. '93 - 2,208 - 4,472
Ironwood State Prison, Feb. '94 - 2,200 - 4,624
Pleasant Valley State Prison, Nov. '94 - 2,616 - 5,188
Valley State Prison for Women, April '95 - 1,980 - 3,570
High Desert State Prison, Aug. '95 - 2,096 - 3,988
Salinas Valley State Prison, May '96 - 2,224 - 4,200
Substance Abuse Treatment Facility, Aug. '97 - 3,324 - 6,239
Kern Valley State Prison, opened June 5 - 5,000
Totals
46,098 - 90,533

Source: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation