- ‹ previous
- 7469 of 8922
- next ›
Prison Guards Lock Down Schwarzenegger
In a political about-face as sudden as it is short-sighted, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared that the way to fix the state's problem-wracked prisons is by building more of them and locking more convicts up inside them.
For the last two years, Big Arnold has pushed for a range of progressive reforms in the nation's biggest prison system, from releasing low-level female drug offenders into halfway houses to bringing back education and treatment programs – even adding the word "Rehabilitation" to the Department of Corrections official name.
Why? Because the prison population has hit a record 170,000, and reducing it makes obvious sense in a cash-strapped state that spends over $7 billion a year on incarceration and still has one of the worst recidivism rates in the country. Schwarzenegger was the first governor in years whose campaign wasn't bankrolled with the help of the prison guards' union, one of the state's most profligate political donors, which freed his hand on correctional policies. But now, suffering from sagging poll numbers and facing a fall election, Schwarzenegger has made an alliance with the powerful union; to prove it, this week he called for the construction of two brand new $500 million prisons, and for the defeat of a ballot initiative that would weaken California's notorious "three strikes you're out" law which has put thousands of minor offenders behind bars for life.
As a federal court investigator put it, Schwarzenegger is abandoning "one of the most productive periods of prison reform" in the state's history and giving the guards' union back a "disturbing" degree of say over incarceration policy. C'mon, Arnold - it wasn't that long ago that you were fighting for the freedom of all humans!
The prison guards donated $1.57 million to Pete Wilson, much less than the $3.4 million that went to Gray Davis (plus another $356K from fund raisers). Is it funny how "A generous salary and benefit package Gov. Gray Davis inked with the state's politically powerful prison guard union eventually will cost CA taxpayers $518 million annually. One month after Davis signed the deal, he got $210K from the guards...
"Our $518 million figure represents the costs of just eight of the provisions of the contract. There are numerous other provisions you can't even quantify, said state auditor Elaine Howle.
In 2000 the prison guards donated $1.9 million to various state senators and Assembly members of both parties.
On the one hand, previous audits have critized the state's 33 prisons--the largest penal system in the nation--for wasteful fiscal practices in their $5 billion annual budget, while, on the other hand, Davis's deal increased the guards pay from a high of $54,888 to $73,428 (what?, approx. 25%).
To be sure, evidently, in an effort to save maony...???, the CA prison system has been endorsing a reduced hiring policy which left 1000 slots vacant, and which resulted in $110 million in overtime during the first half of 2001.
Enter the Commission on Correctional Peace Officer Standards and Training; created seven years ago to develop standards for 34 correctional officer classifications, it has only gotten around to addressing seven, and hasn't even approved those...
Meanwhile, a federal judge recently said that because of the soaring vacancy rates for doctors, nurses, and supervisors, the CA prison health care system is disintegrating and requires emergency intervention by both the fed. court and the governor.