FLAWS IN GOVERNOR'S PRISON PLAN

Proposed $6 Billion in Bonds Won't Cure Crowding, nor Will It Reform
a Failing System

For a governor averse to taxes, Arnold Schwarzenegger is sure willing
to spend his way out of prison crowding.

Schwarzenegger is proposing $6 billion in bonds, including $2 billion
for two new high-security prisons. He wants the Legislature to
approve the money in the next month.

It's too much, too quick, and on the wrong priorities. Legislators
should throw his plan out and come up with their own. And they should
not be rushed by Schwarzenegger's election-year deadline.

Mismanagement and bad policies extending back decades have created
the prison mess; throwing more billions at the same failed system won't fix it.

That said, there are stop-gaps legislators could look at to free up
at least some space. They could start by passing the one good idea in
the governor's package: shifting up to 4,500 non-violent female
offenders out of the 11,000 female prisoners into local facilities
near their families.

Also, geriatric inmates who are no longer a public threat could be
transferred to nursing homes.

Schwarzenegger's plan doesn't include a cent for prison health care
- -- a separate disaster now in the hands of a court-appointed
receiver, Bob Sillen, the former head of Santa Clara County's health
system. Sillen has suggested that construction bonds instead should
be floated for two prison hospitals, one for the mentally ill and one
for the chronically ill. They would have the added benefit of freeing
up about 10,000 beds for higher-risk inmates.

Sillen has the power of the federal court to demand whatever
resources he needs, so it would be smart to accommodate him now as
part of overall prison planning.

With 170,000 inmates, the prisons are at 190 percent of capacity and
are trapped in a vicious cycle. Crowded facilities, with inmates
overflowing into gyms and libraries, snuff out vocational, drug
counseling and recreational programs and feed resentment. Overtime
pay for guards consumes money that could have gone to rehabilitation.
Prisoners with little hope and no training bounce in and out of the
system; the state recidivism rate is the nation's highest.

The sensible alternatives to building more prisons are revamping
parole policies; diverting those rearrested on technical violations
to county jails; and repealing inflexible, overreaching sentencing
and drug laws.

But Schwarzenegger has dismissed sentencing reform. His plan for
building local transition lockups for inmates facing release, at a
cost of an additional $2 billion, is intentionally vague so as not to
stir up locals who won't want prisoners in their back yards.

Schwarzenegger won't ask voters to pass a prison-construction bond
because he knows they're likely to reject it. Legislators shouldn't
be doing his bidding.

Instead of spending billions on new prisons, they should be spending
more on programs to keep inmates from coming back in.