by greg van buskirk

On June 15, the state of California opened Kern Valley State Prison – a new prison designed to house over 5,000 inmates in an attempt to alleviate California’s currently overcrowded prisons.  As of June 2005, California prisons housed 163,076 prisoners (17,226 with immigration holds) – around 195% the maximum capacity for the state system.  And while Kern Valley was intended to help reduce some of this overcrowding, it is mathematically clear that there is no way it alone will solve California’s overcrowded prisons.

Overcrowding: Why are so many people in jail?

Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), was not shy to talk about these staggering figures.  “Even though the prisons were designed with a certain capacity, they were also designed in such a way to handle overcrowding,” Ms. Thornton said unemphatically.  “We do double-bunking or open up the day rooms or the gymnasium and use them for dorms.  [The prisoners] are still housed safely.  Sure, it can increase certain risks, but I think that our staff has been doing a wonderful job managing our population.”

It is very difficult to imagine that inmates may still be “housed safely” under conditions that put so many of them in such close quarters.  According to Ms. Thornton, “certain risks” include physical assault and the spread of communicable diseases.

So where do all of these people come from?  Ms. Thornton estimated that roughly 75-85% of all California inmates have had a history of substance abuse.  “It’s often why people turn to crime,” said Ms.Thornton.  “It’s why we have social injustices – crimes, school drop-outs, violence, broken families.  If there was one social ill that I could cure – just wave a magic wand around – it would be substance abuse.”  However, it is no secret that the drug economy is alive and well within the walls of California prisons.  The website prisonzone.com, a site created by photojournalist Chris Cozzone, understates this reality almost in the form of a dictum: “Get high.  Do crime.  Go to the joint.  Get high.  Do crime.  Nothing changes.  The drug economy knows no barriers.”

Reports on the CDCR Web site reveal that nearly 10 percent of incidents (1,154) reported in 2003 involved drugs.  For comparison, the breakdown for other incidents is: assault and battery with a weapon, 15 percent (1,843); assault and battery without a weapon, more than 44 percent (5,327); possession of a weapon, about nine percent (1,149).   Other incidents are suicide, attempted suicide, and “other.”

Such a reality helps explain California’s staggering recidivism rate (re-offense rate): 65-70%, according to J.P. Tremblay, Assistant Secretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency for California.  Mr. Tremblay explained how in the past, California prisons have served as warehouses for inmates more than anything else, operating with “revolving doors” that see offenders coming back to prison time and time again.  “We have to do something to break that cycle,” said Mr. Tremblay.  “If you do it properly, you can have an impact on the recidivism rate of individuals.  If we can have a reduction of recidivism by just 3-4% in this state, we’ll end up saving thousands of dollars.”

Such a reduction seems difficult in a system that is in dire need for more staff.  According to Ms. Thornton, two prisons in Soledad (about 150 miles south of San Francisco) are currently at a “critical level”: there are so many staffing vacancies that it is impacting the safety of the institutions because they are unable to run normally.  One reason for this may be the increased cost of living for officers.  In the past, prisons were built with housing facilities nearby for officers, but the trend today has gone the opposite direction.  Another reason may be that, according to a recent U.S. Justice Department study conducted to measure violent crime in the workplace, a prison officer’s job is the fourth most violent in the nation (policeman, cabbie, and private security guard occupy the first three slots).

Another great problem contributing to the astounding incarceration rate in California is education, added Ms. Tremblay.  “Fifty to sixty percent of the inmates can’t read at a high school level.  Education is not a significant factor in their lives.  If you want to get a job when you’re paroled and you can’t even fill out a job application, what options do you have?  Most will go out and commit more crimes because that’s all that they know how to do.”  On the topic of parole, Mr. Tremblay said that the average parole time in California is about nine months – a sizeable drop from the 14-month average offered in most other states.  In fact, 10% of the prison population is sent back to prison six times in a three-year period.

With California parole time around 40% less than in other states, it would seem that prisons would strive to offer more education and programs.  Until recently, this has not been a priority.  In a recent interview with Mother Jones Magazine, Senator Jackie Speier (D-CA) shared her experiences from spending a night at Valley State Prison for Women to learn more about the living conditions for the inmates.  Said Speier: “There’s very little programming to help these women, even though many of them are motivated to do college work.  One woman I encountered is taking college units through an Ohio college at $500 a unit, so it’s clear [the prisons are] not helping these women to improve their lives.”

A male prisoner from New York, as quoted at prisonzone.com, added that “with more and more program cuts, them taking away weights and education, and with more guys doing longer sentences, the aggression has got to go somewhere.”  Oftentimes, that “somewhere” turns out to be other prisoners and officers.  Each year, 300,000 male offenders are raped or sexually assaulted, which, according to prisonzone.com, informally places a prisoner’s chance of rape upwards of 90%.

Of course, to help improve the California prison crisis, more work needs to be done on the front end, which means more early intervention programs are needed.  According to Mr. Tremblay, one such outlet for that is better partnering with local law enforcement.  Mr. Tremblay offered the example that county jails do primary evaluations when an offender is first booked; the state would partner with counties to use the same information which then frees up resources that could be used at the other end: parole (which is already weak in California).  Additionally, Mr. Tremblay said that the state needs to improve that county relationship in order to offer intervention programs early on.  “By the time youth hit the state youth authority, it’s pretty much the end of the road for most of them,” Mr. Tremblay said.  “We have to look at it from that standpoint of when [youth offenders] first get into the system – the county level.  If we wait until the state system, it’s too late.”

Privatization: A Nonviable “Solution”

One possible solution that has surfaced from time to time has been that of privatizing certain facilities.  In essence, privatizing means that an outside corporation owns and runs a correctional facility in place of the state.  The corporation must remain accountable to the state and the California Department of Corrections.

However, California only has 13 of privatized facilities.  Of those that are privately run, they are community correctional facilities and are very small (a maximum capacity of around 500 inmates, said Ms. Thornton).  Presently, none of the maximum security prisons are privatized.

Said Ms. Thornton: “Privatizing is designed for community correctional inmates because it is understood that privatization doesn’t offer the same amount of security as do state prisons and maximum security prisons.  You wouldn’t want those facilities privatized because of public safety.”  She also added that privatized facilities don’t always provide for the healthcare of the inmates.  As state prisoners, California inmates are provided with healthcare, which includes a health inspection upon entry into a facility.

Current Efforts: What is being done?

According to the Los Angeles Times (June 15, 2005), “…the [Kern Valley] prison is distinguished as the first state maximum security site in which a full array of training and educational programs is offered and all inmates are required to participate.  Such programs can occupy 6½ hours of an inmate’s day.”

This is a good example of what Mr. Tremblay called “the new focus of streamlining the management structure of the organization in the correctional system in California.”  As of July 1, the California Department of Corrections (CDC) is now the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) – an organizational change of which Mr. Tremblay is in charge.  Under the new structure, wardens’ and superintendents’ main responsibilities are to make sure that the facilities are safe and secure – not to ensure that enough doctors, nurses, and teachers are on staff.  “It allows CDC to look at the entire system and, for example, pull teachers from other institutions and place them where they’re needed.  There’s more flexibility to look at the system more holistically,” said Mr. Tremblay.

That holistic focus is one of the stated purposes of the new system, which claims to make an effort to include rehabilitation programs for inmates.  However, the changes that Mr. Tremblay noted seem to affect the institutionalization (and an increase at that) of the CDCR more than rehabilitation programs for inmates.  The increased push towards institutional standardization, if applied across the board, would possibly detract from programs that could offer more specialized training and education for inmates.  By increasing the bureaucratic element, it appears that power has been divested from the prisons and given to Sacramento.  As the restructuring has just begun, only time will tell.

Yet, the plan looks hopeful.  There are two purposes for the changes: one – that increasing efforts at rehabilitation and education will ultimately reduce recidivism, and two – that the busy-ness will have a positive effect on the prisoners, decreasing the number of undesirable incidents that arise.  CDCR has teamed up with the UCI Center for Evidence-Based Corrections and Dr. Joan Petersilia to research current programming in the system, pre-release preparation, and the effect on recidivism.  Until now, most “evidence” has been a collection of anecdotes.  Effective programs will remain and possibly be expanded, ineffective ones will get axed.

Realignment is one element of the reorganization.  Programming has been scattered across facilities and offered on a first-come, first-served basis.  CDCR is evaluating each institution.  Inmates will be moved to facilities where they fit with the programming, and in some cases, such as in the one prison serving wheelchair-bound inmates that is located in a region that gets a lot of snow, the program, and inmates, will move elsewhere.

Who qualifies for programs will also be addressed systematically.  For example, a vocational training program may have one open spot.  An inmate serving a 25-year sentence might have qualified, in the past, to participate.  But then, what about the qualified individual who is getting out in three years?  He would benefit more than the first inmate, as he will be reentering society much earlier.  When matching prisoners to programs, CDCR will first ask:  Who would best benefit from the program?

CDCR’s reorganization is a giant task.  With 32 state prisons housing more than 163,000 offenders, it will no doubt take time to feel the effects and witness the improvement.  But the good news is that some desperately needed change seems to be afoot.

A Closer Look: Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility

San Diego’s own Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility (RJD) has also felt the pressures of the statewide trend in overcrowding – as of January 2005, it was at 199% capacity.  Lt. Richard Kim, prison spokesman for RJD, said that the significant population crunch is because of the influx of new commitments and transfers from county jails.  He said that overcrowding is nothing new and was foreseen as a possibility during construction.  However, it would be hard to believe that a near-200% capacity was foreseen during construction in the mid-1980s, especially considering that today’s U.S. prison population has shown an 800+% growth over the past 30 years.

However, RJD does provide re-entry programs that are designed to offer inmates job-training and education so that they may find employment upon parole.  One such organization that RJD has a contractual agreement with is the National Skill and Shipbuilding Company and is a portion of the Inmate Employability Program.  The objective is the same for the other programs: to facilitate acquiring employment out in the community.

Another such program is a non-profit community organization called Second Chance, whose Pacific branch is called Strive.  Strive offers job-readiness training to former inmates.  “They come out and canvass the inmate candidates and sign them up before they are released on parole to the community,” said Lt. Kim.  In the past 15 months that Second Chance has been visiting RJD, 48 former inmates have graduated the program.  Second Chance’s results are pretty impressive: 80% of the participants receive employment and 80% of those who are employed retain it (this figure includes participants from other facilities).  Jack Micklos, deputy director of San Diego’s Second Chance program, said that the low number of participants from RJD (48 out of 4,386) is due to several factors:

The Second Chance Program is a huge step in the right direction; San Diego would benefit from its expansion.  Upon their release from prison, former inmates attend job readiness classes for 120 hours over a period of three weeks. They receive referrals for any mental or physical health concerns, assistance in reacquiring documentation needed to get a job (birth certificate, Social Security card, etc.), and clothing and food vouchers.  Housing for up to 60 days is available in a sober-living home, and transportation to and from the classes is arranged.  Upon graduation, participants are lined up with a job and given case management for two years.

The program is really for those who are ready to make concrete changes in their lives. Said Mr. Micklos, some of the men have been in and out of prison many times.  They have reached their mid-thirties and decided, “Enough is enough.”  They want something different for themselves.

There are also those who hear of Second Chance, but opt not to participate. “Sometimes we’re not the right fit.  If we have that contact, though, we are often able to help them find the right fit somewhere else,” said Mr. Micklos, adding that some men just want to get as far away from the system as they can.

And then again, Mr. Micklos noted, there are just some bad folks who should probably go right back into prison.  “I’m not a bleeding heart,” said Mr. Micklos. “I don’t believe that everyone can be rehabilitated.  Some people need to be locked up for the rest of their lives.”

In any case, it is clear that rehabilitation involving the whole person, combined with ongoing case management, works for those who wish to change and need the extra support. “The whole idea of rehabilitation is to decrease the recidivism rate.  How offenders function out in the community is a very integral part of the success rate,” said Lt. Kim.

Fast Facts on San Diego’s Justice and Law Enforcement Agencies

In July 2000, San Diego County began offering free DNA testing for inmates claiming that they could have been freed with such evidence, making the county the first in the nation to offer such a program.  The tests cost the county approximately $5,000 each. (CNN.com)
 

San Diego County has sent the lowest number of prisoners to Death Row per capita in California – 32.  Statistically, the county would have 57 inmates on death row if spread out evenly statewide.  As of January 1, 2005, there were 639 Death Row inmates in California. (smdailyjournal.org)
 

San Diego County law enforcement agencies have psychiatric emergency response teams (KnightRidder Tribune Business News) that consist of a police officer and a clinician (typically a social worker or psychologist). The teams function to respond to emergency calls throughout the county. (The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry)
 

In December 2003, North County established a regional Identity Theft Task Force made of representatives from the district attorney’s office, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and other local law enforcement agencies.  It also set aside funds to help support the Identity Theft Resource Center, an existing nonprofit organization devoted to the prevention of identity thefts and providing assistance for victims.  In 2002 alone, there were 1,021 identity theft victims in San Diego County, making it second only to Los Angeles County.  (North County Times)
 

San Diego County’s Emergency Communications Center hosts one of the best dispatch centers with facilities including radio, telephony and console systems, as well as computer-aided dispatch. (Law & Order)  This, along with special officer-training on responding to school-related violence, enabled San Diego County law enforcement to respond to 2001’s shooting at Santana High School within 81 seconds of the first 911 call was logged.  (Washington Crimes News Service)