Prison Health and our community: A Public Health Investigation
By Bernice Yeung
Part of the Prisons & Public Health news blog funded through Spot.Us.
As 2009 comes to a close, so does this news series focused on California prison and parolee health.
But this isn’t goodbye: We’ll return in 2010 with “California Smarter on Crime,” which will provide broader criminal justice news coverage of the state that runs the nation’s largest prison system.
This is a particularly crucial time to report on corrections in California because the confluence of lawsuits, federal oversight and budget cuts brings an increased urgency to the state’s ongoing criminal justice reforms.
Here’s what “California Smarter on Crime” will examine in 2010:
• The state’s continued efforts to address overcrowding. In addition to policy changes, such as diverting offenders from incarceration, the state plans to build or refurbish six prisons to create capacity for 7,588 prisoners, while shipping an additional 2,500 inmates out of state (the state already sends 8,000 prisoners elsewhere).
• A $1.2 billion cut to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has led to the shuttering of prison rehabilitation programs. Six hundred to 900 of the state’s 1,300 prison employees who work in rehabilitation are potentially in danger of losing their jobs, although the Service Employees International Union Local 1000 filed a lawsuit last week to stem the cuts. Gordon Hinkle, press secretary of the CDCR, declined to comment on the legal action, but he writes in an e-mail “unfortunately, the state is in a severe fiscal crisis… This means everything is being looked at, even some of our successful programs.”
• The state’s efforts to open a controversial $116 million, 500-person re-entry facility in Stockton, Calif., which is scheduled to open in three years. Eleven more of these types of re-entry centers, which are designed to prepare inmates to return home, are on the drawing board.
• As part of the Second Chance Act Prisoner Reentry Initiative, $28 million in federal funds is now being dispersed to states, local governments and nonprofits. San Mateo County was recently awarded $677,674 in federal funding to develop reentry programs for San Mateo County jail inmates.
• In November, Californians will elect a new governor and state attorney general. We’ll be watching the candidates’ claims and counterclaims when it comes to public safety.
These various issues will have ramifications not only on offenders and the 95 percent of inmates who are eventually released from prison and jail; it will also have significant effects on California communities, families and taxpayers.
Consider that in 2009, California spent $10.3 billion on corrections, or about 10 percent of the state budget.
In a time of great financial upheaval, now is the time to make sure that Californians are getting what they paid for.
–Bernice Yeung/Newsdesk.org
Sources:
E-mail correspondence with CDCR Press Secretary Gordon Hinkle, December 22, 2009.
San Mateo County Tests Inmate Release Program
Pacifica Riptide, Dec. 20, 2009
“Justice Department Announces Grants Under Second Chance Act Prisoner Reentry Initiative”
Department of Justice, Oct. 6, 2009
Inmates’ lawyers back plan to cut California prison crowding
Sacramento Bee, Dec. 8, 2009
“Mothballed site readied for men’s re-entry facility”
The Record (Stockton, Calif.), Dec. 12, 2009
SEIU launches prison education lawsuit
Sacramento Bee, Dec. 21, 2009
MORE REPORTING
AIDS Cases Surge in California Prisons
California prisons saw 246 additional AIDS/HIV cases between 2007 and 2008, the largest jump in cases of any prison system in the nation, according to a recently released federal report.
New Jails, No Treatment, in California Prison Plan
With his first proposal rejected by a federal court, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week submitted a new, 130-page plan to cut California prisons’ inmate population by 42,000 in two years.
A Pound of Cure: Tracy Velazquez on Prisons and National Health Care Reform
In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Tracy Velazquez of the Justice Policy Institute said national health-care reform could keep people out of jail.
“Every year, thousands of people are locked up in U.S. prisons and jails because they do not have access to health care to treat mental illness and drug addiction,” she wrote. “Prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities are now some of the largest providers of mental health services in the country.”
In conversation with Newsdesk.org, Velazquez, whose Washington, D.C.-based think tank considers “tough on crime” policies to have largely failed, said the costs of incarceration greatly outweigh the price of preventive health care.
California Prisons Report: A Look Inside with Hastings Scholar Hadar Aviram
Despite a year of legal sanctions and budget cuts, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation takes an upbeat tone in its new annual report.
Inspirationally titled “Corrections Moving Forward” [25 mb PDF], the report opens with a letter from the CDCR secretary Matthew Cate, who writes that “in the midst of significant challenges, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has quietly had a remarkable string of successes in the last year. While it is easy to focus on the negative, there have been many positive developments at our agency.”
Is Schwarzenegger’s Prison Plan Good Enough?
Facing a court-ordered deadline to reduce overcrowded state prison populations, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger released a plan last Friday (PDF) that would revisit a previously rejected “early release” program, along with other measures.
After Prison, Calif. Women Find No Care
Women parolees in San Francisco and Alameda counties face long waiting lists for access to health and welfare services, many of which are unreachable by the phone numbers in official resource guides, according to a recent survey by prisoner advocates.
Courts Push Back on California Prisons
How will California resolve its chronic prison overcrowding problems? With court-imposed deadlines ahead, the answer is as murky as ever.
Sept. 18 Deadline Looms
In August, following class-action litigation filed by California inmates, a federal court found that the state’s prisoners were receiving Constitutionally sub-par health and mental health care because of overcrowding, and issued an order requiring the inmate population to be lowered by more than 40,000 over the next two years.
Calif. Prison Woes Tracked in Newspaper’s Interactive Maps
The Sacramento Bee has posted some new online maps in advance of the potential release of 27,000 California inmates due to budget cuts, and another 40,000 thanks to a federal court order to curb prison overcrowding.
Better Health Care, Better Prisons?
In a recent New York Times op-ed, columnist Nicholas Kristof cites the case of Curtis Wilkerson as an example of lopsided budget priorities (“Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons?”), wherein health care is considered too expensive, yet long and costly prison terms are the norm.
Wilkerson, you see, is a California inmate who became entangled in the state’s three-strikes laws; he’s now serving a life sentence for stealing a $2.50 pair of socks (strike one and two both involved abetting a robbery in 1981 when he was 19).
Alameda Plans Ahead for Parolee Surge
With 40,000 inmates slated for release in the next two years due a federal court order targeting overcrowding in California prisons, what to do with all those convicts re-entering society is at the top of peoples’ minds.
(In fact, the state has to come up with a plan of action by mid-September, although it will likely appeal the order.)
Prisons & Public Health: Lois Davis Connects the Dots
Fresh from lockup and battling a host of health problems — including chronic illness, addiction and mental illness — a majority of California parolees wind up in a handful of cities like Los Angeles, Oakland and San Diego.
But here’s the rub: Parolees often can’t get the services they need because they’re going back to low-income communities where health services are “severely strained,” according to a recent RAND Corporation study.
Prisons & Public Health: Why Should You Care?
Ron Sanders, a community-health worker serving former prisoners at San Francisco’s Transitions Clinic, struggles to keep his clients from being among the 66 percent of parolees who eventually return to prison.
No easy task, as many are dealing with addiction, chronic illness, mental health problems — or all of the above. I first became interested in these issues when writing for the San Francisco Chronicle about Sanders, himself a former prisoner who is all to aware of the challenges parolees face.
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