Schwarzenegger's budget: up with prisons, down with communities

While many of California's students struggle in drastically overcrowded and under-funded schools and nearly 1 million children live without health insurance, this year's budget proposes building more prisons. "It has become more apparent that the governor's priorities are with corporations, not communities, and definitely not with making fiscally responsible decisions," commented Susan Burton, executive director of the New Way of Life Foundation in Los Angeles.

The governor's budget and last week's announcement of a proposed $12 billion, 90,000-cell prison and jail expansion project suggest that the governor's mantra of following the people lacks meaningful public safety funding. Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore, prison expert at USC, explains, "Building more prisons and jails will actually undermine the state's efforts to produce wealth, the point of investment in infrastructure. State and local governments will be forced to waste resources for decades repaying the bonds and hiring more jail staff, leading to continuing neglect of productive infrastructure like schools, hospitals and mass transit."

The governor's 2006-07 budget increases spending for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation by $426 million, pushing the total spending to over $8 billion, a 5.6 percent increase over current year spending. The budget does not include expected increases in spending for prisoner health care as a result of the federal court takeover of the CDCR's scandal-ridden health care system.

The governor's budget raised eyebrows coast to coast, and national prison issue watchdogs slammed his move to rejuvenate California's prison building boom. "The number of prison and jail beds this governor is planning to build would be the fourth biggest prison system in the United States. Republican governors from Maryland to Ohio are focusing on sentencing reforms, parole reforms and community investments," says Jason Ziedenberg, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute.

For Debbie Reyes, a community organizer in Fresno with the Prison Moratorium Project, the news is one more example of rural Californians getting the raw end of a deal. "More than 20 prisons have been built in the Central Valley since the 1980s. But Fresno is the poorest city in the nation. The south San Joaquin Valley has some of the worst air in the nation.

"In many of our communities, we can't even drink the water, so how exactly have these prisons helped? We need to increase the minimum wage and school funding. Give him credit for that. But neither the Valley nor the state can afford one more single cage."

The budget proposal includes provisions allowing the corrections department to contract with community drug treatment programs in order to transition some non-violent women prisoners out of state institutions. While this is an encouraging step toward recognizing the need for more substance abuse treatment, prisoner advocates remain critical of the reports that the department plans to convert existing women's facilities into more bed space for men.

"Who is the governor listening to?" wonders Susan Burton. "In poll after poll, Californians have preferred reducing spending on incarceration to cuts in any other state program. Message received? The Independent Review Panel of the California Performance Review, chaired by former Gov. George Deukmejian, said the key to reform of the Department of Corrections and Reform is to 'reduce the numbers' of prisoners. Message received?

"California voters overwhelmingly approved Prop. 66 mandating treatment rather than prison time for nonviolent drug users. Message received? The Little Hoover Commission recommended major changes to California's parole policy to reduce the numbers of parolees returned to prison for technical violations. Message received? Apparently not."

Heidi Strupp of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children in San Francisco asserts that "Gov. Schwarzenegger is committed to more punishment and should recognize that Californians are tired of footing the bill for a system that fails to make our society safer. Policy makers should take a courageous step forward and support policies that build communities, not prisons."

Californians United for a Responsible Budget is a statewide coalition of over 40 organizations committed to reducing prison spending by reducing the prison population and closing state prisons. Contact them through Rose Braz, Critical Resistance, 1904 Franklin St., Suite 504, Oakland, CA 94612, (510) 444-0484, rose [at] criticalresistance.org.