New Prison Statistics: California's Continuing Correctional Failures

Prison Population Rise Underlines Failure to Enact Reform and Close Prisons

Embargoed for Release
May 27, 1:30 PST (4:30 EST)

Contact: Rose Braz, 510.435.6809

CALIFORNIANS UNITED FOR A RESPONSIBLE BUDGET (CURB)

Oakland, CA- The latest national prisoner survey to be released by the Justice Department today shows that California's failure to implement and embrace parole and sentencing reforms resulted in the state's prison population rising slightly after significant declines in previous years.

Prisoners and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2003, to be released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics on Thursday, reports that the state's prison population rose by 1.9% from mid year 2002 to 2003. According to the new survey, the prison population hovered around 163,000 in 2003, after falling to 160,000 in previous years.

Earlier this month, legislators heavily criticized the California
Department of Correction's (CDC) decision to hire 1,000 new guards without legislative authorization, and held suspect a CDC declaration of a "State of Emergency" that warned of rising prison admissions, after CDC conceded there had been "delays in implementation" of modest parole and educational reforms enacted last year by the state.

"These new figures underline the fact that the CDC has failed to
implement reforms passed last year and the Governor and the Legislature have failed to even consider reforms undertaken elsewhere in the country," says Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore of the University of Southern California, one of 19 commissioners appointed by Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), to study and recommend the closure of prisons following Gov. Schwarzenegger's creating of a commission comprised entirely of individuals who have overseen and enabled prison expansion. "The real 'State of Emergency' is that the corrections system cannot correct itself."

Governor Schwarzenegger's January budget proposal acknowledged that the only way to reduce prison spending is to reduce the number of people in prison and said that, given an expected decline in the prison population by 2005, the state should study prison closures. Earlier this month, CURB released a proposal that the state close Pelican Bay, Valley State,
Folsom State and the California Correctional Center, Susanville, and cancel the Delano II prison. [http://www.curbprisonspending.org]

The CURB proposal is the third prison reform proposal released in
California in the last six months. In April, the Coalition for Effective
Public Safety (CEPS), a coalition of prison experts representing
community, faith, criminal justice reform, labor, professional, and
civil rights organizations, released a proposal that would reduce the
prison population and prison spending by at least a $1 billion a year. [http://www.calcsea.org/csd/ceps.asp] In November, the Little Hoover Commission, a state public policy watchdog organization, released Back to the Community: Safe and Sound Parole Reforms, a report urging reforms to the parole system that would save hundreds of millions of dollars a year, calling the state's parole system, "a billion dollar failure."
[http://www.lhc.ca.gov/lhcdir/report172.html]

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Rose Braz, Director
Critical Resistance
1904 Franklin St.,Ste. 504
Oakland, CA 94612
510.444.0484
fax 510.444.2177
email: rose [at] criticalresistance.org