The California Prisoncrat: budgets, politics and repression

Governor Schwarzenegger campaigned on the platform of cleaning up how politics are conducted in California. Due to a budget deficit of $14 billion, no state agency will be able to escape across-the-board cut-backs. However, corrections has an unholy advantage over all other segments of state government.

The California Department of Corrections (CDC) is an unmanageable conglomerate of 32 state prisons, with a $5.3 billion budget. The Schwarzenegger administration has offered a number of cost-cutting ideas--from releasing inmates early, revamping the parole system, and closing down prisons.

There are two opposing schools-of-thought on the issue of drugs, crime, and public safety in California. On one side are the bipartisan proponents of the drug war and prison industrialism. They are dogmatic in their support for all manners of unforgiving criminal justice precepts, no matter how ill-conceived or ineffective. These advocates of heavy-handed punishments are well-funded and lead by the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA). They are brilliant in their tactics by investing in candidates on both sides of the political spectrum. With their annual $20 million war chest, they have no equal.

On the other side of the debate are the anti-drug war, pro-human rights opponents of the American prison phenomenon--i.e., those of us locked-up, our loved ones, and a very small number of dedicated prisoner-advocates. Our allies are generally volunteer activists who operate on shoestring budgets.

On its face, the CCPOA is simply a union looking out for the interests of their constituents. However, their successes have created a power-vacuum. Corrections is an industry lavishly rewarded for a generation of miserable recidivism rates, scandals, and controversies. They have been allowed to expand and grow despite their failures.

The contemporary criminal justice ideology of punishment over rehabilitation relieves prison administrators from the burden of being required to manage in a results-oriented atmosphere. This has allowed the prison system to concentrate its resources on their guards, as opposed to the inmates.

Points to consider: - From 1984 to 1994, twenty-one state prisons were built and only one state university. - College fees are raised every year and education budgets for students K-12 always get hit hard. - Prison guards are paid better than all state educators, including tenured CSU professors. - Prison vocational classes were virtually eliminated when the CDC had to lay-off workers. It was determined that correctional educators--CDC employees who actually provide a meaningful service--not guards, were expendable. - The CCPOA negotiated a 34 percent pay raise in 2002 when the state was in the middle of a fiscal crisis.

As far as corrections go, the CDC is too large and the union representing the 29,000 prison guards too powerful. A number of things have to happen if the CDC is ever to assume their place alongside, not above, other state agencies.

1. All nonviolent drug offenders, including second and third strikers, need to be placed in community-based treatment facilities. Incarcerating drug offenders in $30,000 a year prison beds for lengthy and life sentences needs to come to an end.

2. Change the state's recidivist sentencing schemes so that lengthy and life sentences are only given to violent criminals and sexual predators.

3. Permanently close-down a number of prisons in response to these moves. Begin with the older, dilapidated prisons--but don't stop there. The sweetheart deals the CCPOA received for generous campaign contributions need to be identified and undone. These are inexcusable quid pro quos.

Case in point, CDC overtime: Recalled Governor Gray Davis was unconditionally indebted to the CCPOA for million in campaign contributions. In addition to giving the guards a $1 billion pay raise in 2002, he restricted a warden's power to discipline guards who abuse the process of calling in sick. The CDC was already a state agency depending heavily on overtime. Davis allowed the CDC to become even more so dependent on overtime by knowingly providing rank-and-file guards the power to write their own rules. Because the union runs corrections, not upper echelon administrators, chronic overtime abuses result in the department going over budget by half a billion dollars a year. This is how a prison guard is able to earn a salary of over $100,000.

While the Schwarzenegger administration talks about inmate population cuts and prison closures, California is the recipient of a skewed state government. And the guard's power-base is still unmatched. A whole generation of CCPOA-owned lawmakers are still in Sacramento waiting to do the guard's bidding.

It is not my position that corrections is the only problem plaguing our society. Nor do I attempt to diminish society's justifiable concern with public safety. But the correctional special interests have been a corrupting influence for so long something drastic needs to be done. As an inmate I've lived under the reign of the CCPOA for over half a decade as a nonviolent three strikes drug offender. I see firsthand what society cannot. I see an army of overpaid correctional officers absolutely bloated on government funds. They own this state and think it's funny. They need to be placed on half rations, not us.

California inmates as a demographic have nothing else to give. We are forced to spend the rest of our lives in these Gulags of pillaged humanity. The guards have taken in all. It is through mismanagement and greed that a $5.3 billion state agency looks to the inmate population when pressured by the legislature to trim costs. They extort us--we are the economic hostages. All the money we receive from our loved ones and the collect-only telephone calls we place are both heavily taxed. Currently, 33 percent is deducted from all incoming moneys--which will increase to an astounding 55 percent in mid-2004. All of it under the guise of restitution. The telephone service providers have been awarded the lucrative California prison contract without even having to place a bid--with the CDC receiving tens of millions in kickbacks. We receive the worst deal imaginable due to this "no-bid" arrangement.

These are merely a few examples. Welcome to the world of the California state prisoner where cumulative injustices are inflicted on the entire population who simply have no voice, no rights, no representation.

As state prisoners in the California prison system, we are mere fodder. We are the king's peasants and treated accordingly. Taxation without representation has a renewed meaning for 160,000 of us and our loved ones. Oppression comes to mind.

This is not just about budget problems, pork barrel politics, and spending cuts--this is about people. This is about society. As a member of a voiceless population, I speak for all when I say: "Enough is enough. We have nothing more to give. You've taken it all. Give some of it back and leave us alone." When looking for some other miserable demographic to demonize--the prisoncrat should simply look in the mirror.

--A California Prisoner, January 2004