“We have thoroughly examined the court’s concerns and believe that this plan represents the best option to meet the court’s order,” said CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate.
“Although this plan meets the court mandate, we continue to believe our best option is the original plan already being implemented by the state that reduces the prison population over time without compromising public safety.”
Click here for CDCR’s Population Management Plan Filing
Click here for Three Judge Court Ordered Plan: Table A
SACRAMENTO – The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) today filed a revised plan with the federal three judge panel that addresses the panel’s concerns about the department’s previous filing submitted on September 18, 2009. The panel ordered the department to produce a population plan to meet the court’s operational capacity level of 137.5 percent by the end of 2011.
“We have thoroughly examined the court’s concerns and believe that this plan represents the best option to meet the court’s order,” said CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate.
“Although this plan meets the court mandate, we continue to believe our best option is the original plan already being implemented by the state that reduces the prison population over time without compromising public safety.”
The revised plan includes the proposals from the September 18, 2009 plan as well as additional options the court may consider. The department can only reach the court’s population goals with changes in state laws or federal court orders.
The department has implemented or plans to implement measures directly available to it through the Administration’s executive powers, including:
- developing and deploying the Parole Violation Decision Making Instrument statewide;
- maximizing the use of the currently authorized California Out-of-State Correctional Facility program;
- considering eligible undocumented inmates for commutation and deportation;
- discharging from parole illegal aliens who have been deported by the federal government; and
- utilizing electronic monitoring systems, such as global positioning systems (GPS), for eligible parole violators as an alternative to incarceration.
Other measures require changes in state law. In September 2009, the Administration was able to obtain legislative enactment of the following:
- summary parole – low-level, lower-risk offenders will no longer be placed on active parole, which will reduce the number of offenders returning to prison for parole violations; and
- credit earning enhancements – reduces time served for qualified inmates.
The Legislature declined to enact three of the Administration’s other proposed measures, including:
- increasing the monetary threshold for grand theft;
- providing alternative housing options for low-level offenders (alternative custody); and
- limiting sentencing options to county jail for certain criminal offenses.
The Administration is seeking a change in state law through the legislative process early next year to:
- increase the monetary threshold for grand theft;
- provide alternative custody housing options;
- seek authorization to continue the California Correctional Out-of-State Facility (COCF) program and to expand the number of inmates that can be held in custody out-of-state;
- seek legislative enactment of a law that would enable CDCR to accelerate construction of in-state capacity authorized by AB 900; and
- seek legislative enactment of a law that would expedite leasing, building and/or operating new beds through establishment of private vendor contracts to house inmates and operate private facilities in the state.
Today’s court filing does not derail the Department’s appeal of the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. CDCR filed its appeal in September and submitted a jurisdictional statement to the U.S. Supreme Court on October 5, 2009.
The November 12, 2009 Population Reduction Plan submitted to the court today will be posted to CDCR’s web site at www.cdcr.ca. gov once it is filed with the court.
And:
State submits plan to reduce prison population
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, November 12, 2009
(11-12) 20:32 PST SAN FRANCISCO — The Schwarzenegger administration bowed to a federal court order Thursday and submitted a plan to reduce California’s prison population by more than 40,000 in two years, largely by sending fewer people to prison for relatively minor crimes and parole violations.
Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate complied with the Thursday deadline set by a three-judge panel in San Francisco, while insisting that the court had no authority to order the population-reductio n plan or to issue additional decrees necessary to make it work. The state has already served notice of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The plan includes several of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’ s proposals that the Legislature has already rejected: allowing some elderly or ailing prisoners to finish their sentences in local custody or home confinement; sending criminals to county jail instead of prison for crimes such as drug possession, receiving stolen property and writing bad checks; and raising the threshold for felony grand theft from $400 to $950.
Back to Legislature
Cate said Schwarzenegger would resubmit those proposals to lawmakers. In the meantime, the state said the court could put the measures into effect by ordering prison officials to accept only inmates who met the proposed standards – for example, someone who had stolen $950 or more.
Those three changes alone would reduce the inmate level by nearly 19,000 in two years, state lawyers told the panel. They said another 5,000 inmates could be transferred to newly built private prisons in the same time period by waiving some environmental laws and other barriers to construction.
The plan also calls for imprisoning fewer parolees for minor violations, transferring some inmates out of state and a modest amount of prison construction.
The administration would prefer a plan that “reduces the population much more slowly over a greater period of time” and relies more on bond-funded expansion of the prison system, Cate told reporters.
But, he noted, “This plan wasn’t written to satisfy the Department of Corrections. We’re under court order.”
If the Supreme Court rejects the state’s argument that the court panel has exceeded its authority under federal law, the administration will comply with its orders, Cate said.
A lawyer for prisoners who sued the state said he was encouraged.
Lawyer for prisoners
At first glance, the plan appears to be “a reasonable and thoughtful way of approaching the legal issue,” said attorney Donald Specter of the nonprofit Prison Law Office. “The population reduction has to target the offenders who are coming in for the less serious crimes,” and that’s the approach that the state appears to be taking, he said.
One Republican legislator, however, predicted that lawmakers or voters would reject many of the proposed changes in sentencing.
Plans to send fewer people to prison, such as the change in the threshold for grand theft, are “an egregious compromise of justice,” said Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber (Tehama County). He said the state needs to build more prisons.
By contrast, Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee, criticized the plan’s provision for some new prison construction, which would add about 2,400 beds in two years, in addition to the 5,000-bed private prisons.
“I think that doesn’t deal with the problem,” Leno said. “The overcrowding is a symptom. Building new beds doesn’t address the problem that caused the symptom.,” said Leno. He said the state should change its sentencing guidelines, a proposal that is not in the administration’ s plan.
The clash over prison conditions came to a head in August, when the three-judge panel ruled that overcrowding in the state’s 33 correctional facilities – now filled to nearly twice their designed capacity of 80,000 – was the main reason that health care for inmates violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco appointed a receiver to manage the health care system in 2006 after concluding that substandard care was killing one inmate per week.
The panel – Henderson, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento, and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – said the state could meet its constitutional obligations by reducing the prison population from 150,000 to 110,000 in two years.
The judges insisted it could be done without a massive prisoner release or other steps that might endanger the public, and suggested such measures as ending imprisonment for minor parole violations and shifting some low-risk inmates from state to county custody or in-home monitoring.
Defiant at first
Schwarzenegger had previously proposed changing the parole system along the lines suggested by the court, but his first reaction to the August order was defiance. He filed a plan on Sept. 18 that had a timetable of five years rather than two years, still fell short of the demanded 40,000 reduction, and was based on assumptions that lawmakers would accept measures they had previously rejected.
Lawyers for the prisoners asked the panel to hold the governor in contempt, but the judges gave him one more chance, setting a new deadline of Thursday and saying they would impose their own plan unless the state complied.
Arnolds response to three Judge courts order is a proposal to crowd other states with CA inmates at Ca tax payer expense within one year!! while spending more money building and renovating prisons in a timely manner.
It looks like he simply just wants to squish the current prison population into another form of tax payers money.And crowding county jails would be no ease to humanitarian cruelty this state currently imposes upon thousands of inmates.
Anyone that knows a little about how brutal CA court houses are, knows the stats provided in the response are not accurate when it comes to re-entry of prison inmates.Especially if placed on summery probation! instead of serving a year in prison or offered a drug program for drug possession as a violation of parole. Drug addicts will simply be charged with possession and sentenced to longer prison terms for second and third strike cases.
The 3 strike law needs to be thrown back to hell from witch it came,before any fake, exspensive step to prison reform is taken.Then the money saved from not housing inmates for years on a petty thief or drug possession should be put back into our schools and used to build rehabilitation centers for drug addicts. Maybe then their would be more volunteers for teen out reach drug counselors and mentors before the whole circle of incarcerated life repeats it self in generations to come.
Positive solutions make the world go round.
Not extra spending on putting American people and family’s in a no win situation.
By: jessica on November 29, 2009
at 9:15 am
No one ‘bowed’ to the federal court order. This is just a stall tactic to buy the time until an appeal reaches the U.S. Supreme Court.
The state had to submit a plan as ordered by the three judge court. This plan satisfies a timeline, that is all.
It appears that CDCr wants nothing more than to get the three judge order overturned and continue on their merry way to spending more taxpayer money doing the same thing as always.
True reform must occur at all levels: Laws, sentencing, corrections, parole. Who has the fortitude to tackle such a beast and stop this madness that is sucking the life out of this state?
By: Jacob on November 13, 2009
at 5:41 pm