California Imprisoned by It’s Own Shortsightedness

I read an interesting piece by Damon Azali-Rojas entitled, “The Omnivorous Police/Prison State and the California “Budget Crisis” . . . in which he asserts “The Hottest Place In Hell Is Reserved for Those Who Build Prisons”. Hmmm.

There are few things that shock me anymore. But the manufacturing of this self-imposed Californian “budget crisis” has come pretty close.

Plain and simple, this current “crisis” is due to the militarization of US society at every level. Federally, the morally bankrupt “war on terror” occupies and imprisons sovereign countries. State-wide, billions of dollars are used to construct new prisons to hold more people, people who are being yanked back into prison from parole or for “breaking” hundreds of new laws that target the Black, Brown and poor. On the county and city levels, we are seeing 1000s of more cops and sheriffs to profile, raid and imprison folks. The omnivorous prison/police state has become Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees hacking away at the social welfare state and the remnants of the victories of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.

What Is the Common Link?

Police, prisons and military are the main growth industry (even Obama’s stimulus plan has 6 billion earmarked for prisons and police not counting the Department of Homeland Security piece of the pie); and
It is always the same sector of people that bear the brunt of these racially targeted policies. From the West Bank to West Oakland, East LA to East Timor, from South Lebanon to South LA-Black, Brown and poor.
In the US, 1 in every 100 people is in prison; 1 in every 45 is either in prison, on probation or on parole. Blacks are 12% of the US prison population but are more than 40% of the 2.3 million in US jails and prisons. Add that to Latinos and Black and Brown together make up 60% of the people in cages while only being 25% of the US population.

In 1984, California prisons captured 24,000 prisoners, today they hold 173,000; in 1984 the CA Department of Corrections budget was $300 million today it is $11 billion. Over 70% of those sent to Californian prisons and jails are there for technical parole violations in other words they were not convicted of a new “crime.” It has taken a hearty bi-partisan effort to achieve this impressive rate of growth.

The California state legislature is continuously passing more laws to be used to encage more people. Because of these legislators gone wild prisons are at 200% capacity. Because of overcrowding, the federal govt. is threatening to force CA to release prisoners but instead California passes AB900 to build more cages as the solution for an eviscerated social safety net.

So let’s look at how the police/prison growth industry has been affected by the economic downturn.

At a time when the California government can’t pay its bills or cut welfare checks to the neediest, a time when it is sending IOUs for tax returns, it is driving forward (guns a blazin’) with the largest prison construction project in the world: a project that would have the California prison system (projected at 225,000 prisoners) eclipse the entire federal prison population (199,618 as of Dec/07), in other words almost a 10-fold increase in California prisoners in 24 years.

We’re talking about AB 900 and its evil twin ABX1-10. Together, these bills represent the latest bipartisan attempt to incur more state debt in addition to the projected $42 billion deficit by the end of FY 09-10. Passed by the Democratic legislature almost a year and a half ago with the support of the Republican governor, they would lasso $12 billion for 53,000 new prison and jail beds. Of course, this is only for construction and not the additional $1.6 Billion a year to pay the guards time and a half overtime, the barbwire, the shackles and shotguns (aka-operations).

It’s not just California! The US leads the world in the percentage of it’s population locked away in prison! The US has a higher percentage of it’s popultion in prison than China, Iraq, Iran, Russia or any other “oppressive” regime that may come to mind! 1% of the US population is in prison – higher than any other country! Obviously this is good business for judges, court personnel, lawyers, prison builders and prison guards . . . but at what cost? 

$49 Billion a year to be exact!

And don’t you feel safer? No wonder going back to the US feels like going to a police state.

According to a recently released report by The Pew Center on The States,

“The United States imprisons more people than any country in the world,” the report said. Using updated state-by-state data, it said more than 2.3 million adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 — or one of every 99.1 adults out of a total population of some 230 million adults.

The numbers put the U.S. far ahead of more populous China, which it said has 1.5 million people behind bars, and Russia, which has 890,000 inmates. The Pew report cited January statistics from the “World Prison Brief” released by the International Center for Prison Studies at London’s King’s College.

It also said the U.S. — with 750 inmates per 100,000 people — “is the global leader in the rate at which it incarcerates its citizenry, outpacing nations like South Africa and Iran.”

South Africa has 341 per 100,000 citizens, Iran has 222 per 100,000, and China 119, according to the World Prison Brief.

Russia and other former Soviet republics had the highest incarceration rates within Europe. Russia has 628 inmates per 100,000 people, followed by Belarus’s 426 per 100,000, Georgia’s 401 per 100,000 and Ukraine’s 345 per 100,000, according to the World Prison Brief.

Within the U.S., the growing inmate population “is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime,” the Pew report said.

The 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier, the report said. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, it said . . .

The numbers were “especially startling” for some groups, the report said. “While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine.”

The nationwide figures, as of Jan. 1, include 1,596,127 people in state and federal prisons and 723,131 in local jails — a total 2,319,258 out of almost 230 million U.S. adults.”

The undisputed leader is California, where spending totaled $8.8 billion last year. 

The report notes that,

“Even when adjusted for inflation, that represents a 216 percent increase over the amount California spent on corrections 20 years earlier. And last year, the governor signed a bill authorizing another $7.9 billion in spending, through lease revenue bonds, for 53,000 more prison and jail beds. Texas, with a slightly larger
number of inmates, ranks a distant second in spending, investing roughly $3.3 billion last year.

California vividly symbolizes the financial perils of the state prison business. On top of the perennial political tug-of-war, the state’s whopping corrections budget is shaped by a bevy of court settlements that make predicting and controlling spending tricky. Following successful lawsuits by prisoner plaintiffs, California now is subject to court oversight of inmate medical and dental care, mental health services, its juvenile offenders, and the treatment of disabled inmates. Even its parole revocation system is controlled by a legal settlement, and thereby subject to judicial orders that influence spending.”

The Pew Report

California is committed to wharehousing “state property” – prisoners who are sentenced to the California system – and doesn’t waste a penny on rehabilitation efforts. Most of these prisoners will eventually be released into your community and become your neighbors without any effort having been made to rehabilitate, educate or train them in an alternative way of life . . . doesn’t that make you feel even more secure?

Where did we as a nation go wrong?

Somewhere along the way we’ve lost our way and only a radical change of direction can get us back on the path that our founders envisoned.