opinion
Cruel, usual punishment

GOV. GRAY Davis inherited a multibillion dollar budget surplus. With a staggering combination of incompetence and indifference, Davis has turned that surplus into a $38 billion shortfall. To "solve" this problem and clean up his mess, Davis wants to slash education, health care, and social services.

But one department has escaped Davis's budget axe: the Department of Corrections. The DOC faces a tiny 1.8 percent cut overall. Some areas of the prison budget even get a big boost. Davis is raising the average prison guard salary to a whopping $73,000 a year by 2006. This will cost $120 million next year, and $680 million annually by 2006. Other luxuries in the prison budget: $160 million for a new department headquarters and $220 million for a new state-of-the-art death row unit at San Quentin State Prison.

Where will Davis get this extra half billion dollars this year? In part, by slashing education programs for prisoners by $46.2 million. These programs account for only 3 percent of the prison budget but face the deepest cuts of any area in the department. Inmate education programs can't spare the cash. Davis has already gutted them over the past three years, eliminating 500 positions. Thirty thousand eligible inmates already sit on waiting lists. Yet highly successful programs could be eliminated altogether, ones like the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, where inmates learn carpentry and airplane engine repair, and a standout program at Ironwood State Prison that helps inmates earn associate degrees.

This prison budget demonstrates the worst kind of short-term thinking. It is not just inhumane. It also doesn't even make economic sense. Many studies over the past 10 years have shown that education programs lower recidivism and help former inmates get jobs. According to a study published in the Correctional Educational Journal, prison education programs similar to the one at Ironwood reduced the recidivism rate among participating Arizona inmates from 60 percent to only 10 percent.

The average inmate reads at a seventh-grade level. With educational programs, inmates earn GEDs and get vocational and postsecondary degrees – essential to finding jobs and avoiding repeat offenses. These programs save the state money that it would spend on repeat offenders. Another study by the Correctional Education Association concluded that for each dollar the state spends on prison education, it saves two.

The human and financial costs of cutting these programs are far greater than the $46.2 million "savings" in Davis's budget. And the cost will be borne by inmates and taxpayers alike, by all of California. But Davis will make us pay that cost so prison guards can make $73,000 a year. Why does Davis care more about prison guards than he does about everyday Californians? The answer is simple: Davis has accepted $3.4 million in campaign contributions from the prison guards union since 1998. They are his number-one contributor.

Davis, of course, denies any link between the union's contributions and his alarming pro-prison – and anti-prisoner – policies. But it's hard to argue with the numbers. California spends more on prisons than any other state does. But it ranks just 41st in per capita spending on higher education. And now Davis is giving pink slips to teachers and pay raises to prison guards. He is tearing down prisoner education programs and building a new death row.

Davis wants to make inmates and taxpayers pay for his incompetence and corrupt favoritism. But if anyone should be punished for squandering California's fiscal future, it should be Davis himself.

So here is our simple message to Davis: stop trying to punish others for your misdeeds. Call for a freeze on prison guard salaries. Cut the luxuries in the prison budget, not the inmate education programs. Now. You've wasted enough time and money. Don't waste any more.

Van Jones is executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. For more information go to www.booksnotbars.org.