More prisons likely on the way (Nov 22)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
A trial is under way in San Francisco that could result in an order to release as many as a third of California’s 156,000 prison inmates due to poor prison health care.
The prison health care system already is in receivership, with demands for $8 billion from the state’s General Fund to be spent now and on future prison health care facilities.
The prison system is designed to house about 100,000 inmates, but has 156,000 crammed in, with more going behind bars all the time.
The Legislature and the citizenry may have a big choice in the not too distant future as a result of these numbers: Either build more prisons and equip them with adequate health care facilities, or forget determinant sentencing and let crooks descend on local communities, where they will strain parole and probation systems, not to mention local jails, where many are likely to wind up.
The citizens and legislatures of many states, including California, made decisions in the 1980s and ’90s to get more criminals off the streets longer by mandating minimum sentences for certain types of crimes. Statistics showed that keeping criminals behind bars would lower crime rates, and that has proven true in many cases.
But the citizens forgot one thing: It is easy to say crooks should spend more time behind bars, but you have to have the prison space to make it happen.
That has been the problem from the get-go. Even though California has built many new prisons in the recent past, they haven’t been enough. We have 33 prisons now, but we need about 50, and building those extra 17 prisons will be a huge undertaking.
Get used to the idea, and get ready to pay.
