CDCR Prison Overcrowding Proposal Shortsighted, Ineffective Say Experts

For Immediate Release—June 8, 2011




CDCR Prison Overcrowding Proposal Shortsighted,

Ineffective Say Experts

Advocates, Academics, Organizations Oppose Construction & Propose Sustainable Population Reduction



Contact: Isaac Ontiveros

Communications Director, Critical Resistance

Office: 510.444.0484

Cell: 510.517.6612




Oakland CA— Yesterday, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) announced a multi-million dollar plan to construct new prisons, reopen old ones and shift prisoners to county jails. Responding to the recent Supreme Court decision ordering an immediate population reduction in California’s infamous prison system, CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate specifically rejected reforms to the California system. Advocates, academics, and organizations from across California have in turn rejected CDCR’s recommendations and demand that the state relieve often-deadly overcrowding while freeing up resources to provide reentry services to prisoners coming home as well as desperately needed funding for health, employment, education, and other social services across the state. Low income communities, especially low-income communities of color, have been hit hardest both by budget cuts and California’s prison system.




Over 40 member organizations of Californians United for A Responsible Budget (CURB) sent an open letter to California Governor Brown and CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate's Offices late last week laying out ways the State could safely reduce the prison population by tens of thousands of prisoners while saving billions of dollars. The coalition vehemently rejects construction or expansion of prisons and jails as a response to the Supreme Court ruling, writing, “Imagining that we can solve the problem of crowded cells by building more cells has clearly been one of the key failed policy dreams of governors since [Governor] Deukmejian. Building to reduce overcrowding is what got us to Plata [the overcrowding case upheld by the Supreme Court].”





In their open letter, the groups are also critical of current realignment plans, which could simply shift prisoners from overcrowded state prisons to overcrowded county jails, calling it “expansion of mass incarceration at the county level” and noted the grave fiscal impacts of costly burden shifts, saying, “California counties are already spending anywhere from 70 to 80% of their general fund budgets on public safety… realignment could mean the elimination or further reduction of parks, libraries and municipal support services for youth and elderly populations in the state.”




While it remains to be seen if CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate’s hard line against reform reflects the will of California’s decision-makers, let alone its residents, CURB says it will continue to push for the more than a dozen population reduction reforms outlined in the open letter as well as its Budget for Humanity released earlier this year. Many of the measures proposed by CURB have been effectively, safely, and successfully implemented in other states across the country and include repealing three strikes law; expanding medical parole and compassionate release for terminally ill and medically incapacitated prisoners; reforming sentencing laws by reducing the penalty for drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor; eliminating return to custody as a sanction for administrative and technical parole violations; expanding “good time” credits; and much more.





CURB maintains that any solution to the prison crisis requires that California shift its priorities “away from the failed policies of imprisonment and back towards a society that invests our scarce tax resources to develop our people rather than cage them.”