Free the prisoners!
By Steven T. Jones
For all the outrage and political posturing around federal judges ordering California to reduce the state’s prison population, this has been foreseeable for more than a decade and it’s something that our elected leaders should embrace as both humane and a partial solution to our budget woes.
The bottom line is our prisons are shamefully overcrowded, thanks largely to legislators pushing tough-on-crime and no-new-taxes measures for decades. But politicians from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to Attorney General Jerry Brown have vowed to fight the order all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“It seems like everyone’s on the same page with this as far as elected officials,” Ronn Owens said on KGO radio this morning, where Lt. Gov. (and gubernatorial candidate) John Garamendi sounded a little more reasonable than other politicians who have been tripping all over themselves to sound tough and indignant, lest someone call them soft on crime.
"We've known this is coming. This is not something new," Garamendi said. "The problem is failed leadership." He called for more creative incarceration solutions such as more conservation camps (not the best idea) and more aggressive efforts to lower recidivism rates (a better idea). But he shied away from more radical and effective solutions such as ending the war on drugs.
Brown, after taking a courageous stand in favor of judicial independence in December, should be ashamed of himself. Instead of beating his chest, he should be talking about the kinds of obvious solutions that he’s advocated in his previous iterations, such as ending the war on drugs, parole reform, and freeing most nonviolent offenders.
We can no longer afford to have some of the world’s highest incarceration rates and lowest tax rates, it's just that simple.
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Comments (2)
When I attended the hearings I heard the release program discussed in detail, and no prisoner will just be returned to the community without a review and a release program. The statistics accepted by the defense, i.e. the State of CA, shows that the number of parolees in a community has nothing to do with the crime rate. As a matter of fact the statistics for Fresno have shown that the crime rate was lower, even though the parolee numbers were up. This fear mongering about public safety is a farce, and excuse to build more prisons, lock up more people, and do nothing about rehabilitation, job training, education and incentives to come out and become productive members of our community again. Most men and women behind bars are not violent and are not a threat to our communities. Let us rise up and stop this insanity and spend our tax dollar on the public good not on the prison industrial complex.
Posted by formaya | February 10, 2009 07:07 PM
When I attended the hearings I heard the release program discussed in detail, and no prisoner will just be returned to the community without a review and a release program. The statistics accepted by the defense, i.e. the State of CA, shows that the number of parolees in a community has nothing to do with the crime rate. As a matter of fact the statistics for Fresno have shown that the crime rate was lower, even though the parolee numbers were up. This fear mongering about public safety is a farce, an excuse to build more prisons, lock up more people, and do nothing about rehabilitation, job training, education and incentives to come out and become productive members of our community again. Most men and women behind bars are not violent and are not a threat to our communities. Let us rise up and stop this insanity and spend our tax dollar on the public good not on the prison industrial complex.
Posted by formaya | February 10, 2009 07:10 PM