Amador Ledger Dispatch
Coalition supports...

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Coalition supports changes to parole policies

Monday, January 14, 2008

By Staff Report

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today released a budget that would take a first step at addressing California's prison spending binge by reducing the number of people in prison. Even with these changes, prison spending was still slated to rise to $11.4 billion in 2008-09, a 6 percent increase over the revised 2007-08 budget.

The governor proposed restructuring sentences for a limited number of people and changing parole policies that result in California sending people back to prison for parole violations at twice the national average. If implemented, these modest moves would reduce the number of people in prison by 28,408 and save the state more than a billion dollars by budget year 2009-10, preserving those funds for areas such as education and health and human services hit hard in the governor's budget proposal.

"A recent report by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency found that releasing people from prison early did not increase their odds of going back. In some cases the recidivism rate among the early release groups was lower than those who served their full sentence," said Laura Magnani of Californians United for a Responsible Budget, which supports the governor's proposals to reduce the number of people in prison. The NCCD study reviewed early releases nationwide from 1981 through 2004.

While supporting these proposals, the coalition also was critical of the governor's budget expenditures related to AB900, which will build 53,000 new prison and jail cells at an astounding cost of $15 billion for construction and debt service alone.

"The governor's budget recognizes that the only way to cut prison spending is to reduce the number of people in prison. The next step is to make permanent changes and to reduce the number of prisons in the state, not build 53,000 more cells as envisioned in AB900," said Debbie Reyes of the California Prison Moratorium Project.

A series of 2007 reports by the Justice Policy Institute looked at what does make communities safer: more available, quality, affordable housing, increased investment in education, and increased employment and wages.

"The only sane solution is to reduce the number of people in prison. With a looming $14 billion deficit which threatens to further gut education and social services, we owe it to our future generations to invest in our hopes and not our fears," said Heidi Strupp of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.

CURB has produced 50 Ways to Reduce the Number of People in Prison, which includes the measures outlined by the governor and many other suggestions. "We could further reduce the number of people in prison by releasing the tens of thousands of prisoners serving life with the possibility of parole who are eligible for parole and denied under the state's 'no parole policy' which Courts are continually challenging," said Hamdiya Cooks of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.

Numerous statewide polls of likely voters have found that Californians favor cuts to prison spending over any other area of the state budget.