NEEDED: SENTENCING REFORM IN PRISONS

California Needs A Commission To Give A Thorough Look At Current Laws

The stars seem to be aligning for California to establish an
independent, professional commission to put some order in the state's
chaotic system of prison sentences.

First, it's been 30 years since California moved away from a
discretionary system of judicial sentencing to its opposite: a rigid
system of mandatory punishments prescribed by the Legislature. It's
time to evaluate that shift and consider changes.

Today, judges in California have little flexibility. Sentences in
some cases are unduly long. Too many of the state's sentencing
guidelines are too complex and spread throughout the Penal Code,
making them difficult to understand and apply. There is widespread
recognition that the current system does nothing to encourage good
inmate behavior in prison or provide incentives for inmates to
prepare for life on the outside. Second, intense attention in recent
years to single, high-profile violent crimes has brought about
"drive-by" penalty escalations without attention to their effect on
public safety, recidivism and cost. It's obvious now that ad hoc
action to create more and longer sentences for all sorts of offenses
isn't working.

Third, California prisons are overcrowded. Judge Roger K. Warren, a
20-year veteran of Sacramento County trial courts, told the Little
Hoover Commission in August, "The principal underlying reason why
California prisons are overcrowded, cost a lot and result in high
levels of recidivism at the expense of public safety, is that judges
are sentencing too many nonviolent offenders to prison, and
sentencing some of them to too long a term." Why? Such sentences are
required by California's rigid sentencing laws. So prisons designed
for 80,000 to 85,000 violent, repeat offenders serving long terms are
overcrowded with 170,000 prisoners because lower-level, nonviolent
offenders serving sentences of a year or less increasingly have been
shifted to state prisons.

Fourth, prison costs are escalating, crowding out spending on other
priorities, particularly higher education. The corrections budget
took 4.3 percent of the state's general fund in 1985-1986. Since
then, its share of the budget has doubled. Last year corrections
consumed 8.8 percent of the general fund. Most important, Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger is looking for areas of common ground with legislators
to achieve real accomplishments. Key judges, correctional officials,
criminal justice experts and legislators support change. Creating a
sentencing commission is doable and, if the experience of other
states is a guide, can be quite successful.

As Kara Dansky of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center told the
Little Hoover Commission, sentencing commissions have been "the most
successful modern governmental institution to prevent or cure the
kind of correctional crisis that California now faces."

Between now and the opening of the legislative session in January,
the governor and the Legislature should examine the experience of
other states and craft a sentencing commission that fits California's
unique needs.

It may be too much to hope for a new age of convergence around prison
reform, but consensus is building around some worthwhile solutions. A
sentencing commission is one.