A recent L.A.Times article on prison growth presents a classic California contradiction: "Gov. Backs Prison Growth" Californians want strict criminal penalties such as three strikes and you are out law but we do not want to pay for the necessary expansion in prison space that such a policy requires.
In terms of our state prisons, this contradiction has proven catastrophic:
- our system has 173,000 inmates in 33 prisons most of which are packed to "twice there intendend capacity"
- 16,000 inmates now live in hallways, gyms, lounges and other places not intended for housing
- 118 inmates have been shipped to other states
- the prison health system is now supervised by a federal receiver
- the mental health system "is overseen by a special master and a fedral judge"
- California has the highest recidivism rate in the nation: 7 of every 10 released prisoners returns.
The problem we face now is that repairing decades of neglect and attempting to address these problems will require billions of dollars that a state government facing a 5.5 billion dollar deficit does not have. This will probably mean more borrowing, once again leaving our problems to the next generation to pay off.
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