California Prison Riot

This riot occurred in California over the weekend, but some of the same underlying concerns are present in AZ prisons: over-crowding, limited space and opportunity for productive activity, racial/ethnic tensions, and gangs. Something for us to be mindful of here; our little melees have been nothing compared to this.

I know we're building more prison space in AZ to reduce overcrowding, but that's also to account for a similar rate of incarceration as the general population grows (1/100 adults is in jail or prison in AZ, which is about the national average).

More beds really aren't the solution; we need to decarcerate. We should just commute sentences of those in minimum security (who really aren't dangers to society) to be completed on probation, close down those beds, use some of the savings to hire PO's/train CO's as PO's to do community supervision for those released, use some of it to supplement community-based drug treatment and mental health programs for former prisoners, and use some of it to improve the remaining prison facilities.

Sounds way too simple, I know, but it can't be worse than our current trajectory.
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The Chino Prison Riot

New York Times Editorial

August 11, 2009

Around 200 inmates were injured, 55 seriously, over the weekend in an 11-hour prison riot in California that appears to have had strong racial overtones. Officials are still investigating, but a major cause is already clear: 5,900 men were being held in a facility designed for 3,000. The violence should serve as a warning to officials across the country not to try to balance state budgets by holding inmates in inhumane conditions.

California has already ignored too many warnings. In 2007, a state oversight agency declared that “California’s correctional system is in a tailspin.” That same year, a prison expert warned that the California Institution for Men in Chino, the site of the recent riot, was “a serious disturbance waiting to happen.”

Last week, just days before the riot, a three-judge federal panel ordered the state to reduce its prison population of more than 150,000 by about 40,000 within the next two years. That was the only way, the panel ruled, to bring the prison health care system up to constitutional standards.

The 184-page order painted a grim and alarming picture — with some state prison facilities at nearly 300 percent of intended capacity and some prisoners forced to sleep in triple-bunk beds in gymnasiums. “In these overcrowded conditions,” the court said, “inmate-on-inmate violence is almost impossible to prevent.”

California’s problem — like much of the nation’s — is a mismatch between its harsh sentencing policies and its willingness to pay to keep so many people locked up for so long. A few years ago, it went to the Supreme Court to defend its right, under the state’s three-strikes law, to sentence a shoplifter to 25 years to life. (that's insane!!!)

Given the serious budget problems that California is facing, there is not a lot of extra money available. The state could, however, divert offenders into drug-treatment programs and other non-prison environments, which are less expensive than incarceration and better at rehabilitation. It could also do more to give prisoners job skills and help them re-enter society — so they don’t end up back behind bars.

The riot in Chino and the federal court ruling contain the same message for state officials everywhere: they must come up with smart ways of reducing prison populations and they must do it quickly.