|
 Now, three years after implementing the changes, California has
reduced its prison population by some 30,000 inmates, and the state
is in the vanguard of a prison reform movement spreading across the
country, with support from both the right and the left.
But the promise of savings – a chief goal of prison reform
nationwide – has not been realized. Instead, costs have risen.
The price tag for housing, feeding and caring for a prisoner in
California has climbed to almost $64,000 annually, up from $49,000
five years ago. Per prisoner, the state spends more than three times
the amount it did 20 years ago when the population was a similar
size.
This fiscal year, despite the recent decline in inmate numbers,
California’s corrections budget is one of the largest ever at $10.1
billion.
The state also spends an additional $1 billion annually outside the
corrections budget to help counties implement sentencing
alternatives and handle higher numbers of offenders serving time in
local jails. Another $2.2 billion of state money is slated for
county jail construction.
 The cost per prisoner has swelled for a range of reasons. Some
money-saving moves haven’t happened, including shuttering the
state’s most dilapidated facility and ending out-of-state private
prison contracts. Additionally, court rulings have required the
state to spend billions improving medical care.
The biggest driver of higher costs, however, has been personnel. The
state budgets for about the same number of positions as it did five
years ago, when the state system housed nearly 30,000 more inmates.
“Their numbers go up, not down. There is no way that could be
justified,” state Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber). “It was a deceit and
a fraud to everybody that we were going to save money in
corrections. We have not.”
COURT-ORDERED REDUCTIONS
California’s reforms are rooted in a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court ruling,
which found that the state’s overcrowded prisons violated the Eighth
Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
At the time, 20,000 inmates were sleeping on makeshift triple bunk
beds set up in prison gymnasiums and day rooms. The court ordered
California to reduce crowding from 200 percent of capacity to a more
manageable 137.5 percent.
To comply with the mandate, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown transferred
responsibility for thousands of felons from the state to counties.
Under the new initiative, known as realignment, certain kinds of
felons would no longer be sentenced to state prisons but rather
would serve their time in local jails or alternative programs. In
turn, jails released - or didn’t take in - thousands of inmates with
less serious convictions. The idea was part of a broadly embraced approach to reform aimed at
keeping low-level criminals out of jails and prisons and addressing
mental illness or addiction issues in less expensive and restrictive
settings. Social reformers saw the shift as more effective and
humane, while budget hawks approved of its potential for reducing
costs, which Brown promised would drop by about $1.5 billion by
2015-16.
 “California is finally getting its prison costs under control,”
Brown said in 2012, when he laid out the state's blueprint for
change in a document titled, “The Future of California Corrections.”
Initially, the state seemed to deliver on its promise to reduce both
the prison population and costs. The department eliminated triple
bunk-beds and closed 15 contract facilities. Six months after
realignment, the number of prisoners had dropped by 22,000.
During those early months, the department froze hiring, reduced
staff through attrition and cut programming, each initiative
achieving savings. By late 2012, the budget had dropped by about $1
billion from two years earlier to $8.7 billion.
But the savings were short-lived. In years that followed, the
economy improved, staff was added, the legislature voted to spend
more on rehabilitation, and the courts required additional spending,
said Matt Cater, who headed the California Department of Corrections
and Rehabilitation from 2008 to 2012.
“It’s an interesting phenomenon,” said James Austin, president of
JFA Institute, a criminal justice research group. “The prison
population declined, but the budget continues to rise.”
RISING COSTS
When asked why the corrections budget hasn’t decreased, California
officials often point to a court order to improve inmate medical
care.
In 2013, responding to the mandate, the state opened a new medical
facility in Stockton, called the California Healthcare Facility,
designed for inmates needing long-term inpatient medical care and
intensive mental health services. The facility costs approximately
$295 million annually. The state has also faced increased costs for
prescription medications, including $60.6 million this year for new
Hepatitis C treatments.
[to top of second column] |
The overall rise in the cost per prisoner, however, has been driven
far more by the salaries and benefits of employees.
One reason that personnel costs haven’t fallen in step with the
declining inmate population has been a change in the staffing
formula. Prior to realignment, during more than two decades of
swelling inmate numbers, the state staffed facilities using a simple
formula: For every six new inmates, the department hired one new
staff member.
The formula meant a huge increase in prison personnel during the
1980s and 1990s, especially in the ranks of correctional officers.
If the same ratio had remained in place as the inmate population
fell under realignment, some 4,000 jobs could have been eliminated.
But the state worried that a sharp reduction in personnel could
leave facilities understaffed.
As an alternative, the blueprint introduced a model that
standardized staffing according to a facility’s physical layout,
with guards and other personnel assigned at a level deemed necessary
to secure and operate facilities.
Some saw the move to standardized staffing as a thinly disguised way
to protect the jobs of unionized prison guards, who otherwise might
have opposed the reforms.
“If they got that, they wouldn’t mount a campaign of opposition,”
said Dan Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and
Criminal Justice. “It’s what allowed Brown to move ahead with
realignment.”
But those who were at the table during the discussions, including
current and former department officials and the guards’ union, all
insist that appeasing prison workers was not the reason for the
shift away from the old, ratio-driven staffing model.
“From my perspective, we weren’t carrying [the union’s] water,” said
then-corrections secretary Cater. “We were trying to run an
appropriate system under federal court oversight, which means you’ve
got a lot of things that you have to accomplish with those people.”
The JFA Institute’s Austin notes that any promise of savings was
overstated from the start. A correctional facility, he notes, is
“like an airplane. If that plane is full or empty, the cost is
basically the same. It’s the same thing with a prison.”
OTHER BENEFITS
California prison reform advocates say that saving money was never
the sole point of realignment, even if that was what helped sell
Brown’s plan.
In shifting responsibility for more convicts to counties and
providing money to ease the transition, the state also hoped to spur
new approaches to sentencing, reformers note, including flash
incarcerations, probation supervision, jail programs, supportive
housing and job training.
“When you think about realignment, in some ways it was to save
money. But all of us working on the bill itself … knew it couldn’t
possibly save money,” said Joan Petrels, a Stanford criminologist
and strong supporter of prison reform.
Programs such as those aimed at reducing recidivism are expensive,
Petrels noted, but they have the potential to both save money and
serve society in the long run. Initially, however, “good
on-the-ground policies usually incur more costs,” she said.
Brown's office declined to comment for this story, referring
questions to the corrections department.
Recent CDC Secretary Jeffrey Beard, who retired last week,
acknowledged that the savings haven't been exactly as promised in
the blueprint. But he said that without the reforms the state might
have had to spend billions building more prisons.
“Have we achieved the savings?” asked Beard. “If we look at
cost-avoidance, yes, we have achieved it.”
(Reporting by Robin Respaut; Editing by Sue Horton)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
