LOCKDOWN ON PRISON REFORM

Schwarzenegger's Attempts At Change Are Mired In
A Stalemate With Guards Union

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came to office promising "action" to fix
the state's prisons and to take on the powerful guards union, which is
responsible for much at fault with the system.

Two years later, the problems seem more intractable. Inmates are
stacked up in gyms and classrooms. The prison population, at a record
170,000, is still growing. The prison budget, at $8.2 billion, is
still out of control. The recidivism rate is still among the nation's
highest.

And the governor who once vowed that better management and new parole
policies would cut the census and save hundreds of millions of dollars
is now asking for billions to build two more prisons and expand county
jails.

Prisons chief Roderick Hickman's sudden resignation last month only
confirmed the obvious: Reform, once promising, then faltering, is all
but dead, assurances from Hickman's successor notwithstanding.

Hickman felt the chill of a governor whose attention to prisons has
blown hot, then cold. Schwarzenegger remains interested in reform,
but, referring to the guards union, "the special interests are just
too powerful to get much done in the current environment," Hickman
told the Los Angeles Times.

The current environment is the governor's re-election campaign. It
coincides, unfortunately, with the start of discussions with the union
over its contract that expires July 2. Hickman's resignation may be
the tipoff that nothing good for taxpayers or for reformers will
likely result from those negotiations.

In the last contract, Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature awarded the
guards a fat raise (37 percent over five years) and a sweet retirement
provision (starting at age 50, 3 percent for every year worked). It
also handed over to the guards key management decisions affecting
nearly all areas of operation: overtime pay, guard discipline, job
promotions and staffing levels.

The results have been disastrous. Last week, the San Diego
Union-Tribune reported that through overtime pay, 2,400 guards -- 10
percent of the force and five times the previous year -- received more
than $100,000 last year. One guard amassed $187,000 -- $50,000 more
than Hickman earned. Featherbedding and seniority-based overtime rules
aggravated a guard shortage, driving the budget through the ceiling.

The union has made clear it's not about to give anything up. The
question is whether Schwarzenegger will even try for concessions. A
governor struggling for re-election will be averse to take on another
public-employee union, let alone the state's richest and strongest, in
what would have to be a bruising fight.

Hickman was a former guard who came up through the ranks. He talked
tough and antagonized his former union when he cracked the code of
silence that allowed pervasive abuses to go ignored. He centralized
power in his office, breaking down prison wardens' fiefdoms. But these
were minor dents in the armor. Despite lots of planning for reform and
stabs at it, Hickman leaves an impregnable system intact.

The momentum to turn violence-prone, gang-dominated juvenile centers
into a national model for rehabilitation has stalled, despite a court
agreement to do so. Frustrated by Corrections' inability to get things
done, a federal judge has taken over the prisons' health system and
appointed Santa Clara County health chief Bob Sillen to run it.

In 2004, Hickman moved forward with drug treatment, halfway houses and
home detention as alternatives to prison for minor parole violators.
Then a year ago, after the guards union and a victims-rights group ran
a TV ad attacking the reform, the administration got cold feet and
Hickman abandoned what he had once heralded.

Schwarzenegger has named Jeanne Woodford, a
former warden of San Quentin and Corrections'
second in command, as acting secretary. What the
system needs is not another insider but a
nationally respected prison expert with a track
record of cleaning house, a mandate and strong
backing to do so. But until the governor
demonstrates he's serious about reform and has
the will to take on the union, the resume pile
for corrections secretary will be thin.