California’s Prison System Needs Rehabilitation

California prison authorities have traditionally been much slower to punish the lawbreakers on their own payroll than those they incarcerate. But two significant court cases over the last decade and a half have begun to force state officials to reluctantly address systemic illegalities in the penal system.

Both cases were filed by the Prison Law Office, the plucky not-for-profit public interest organization based near San Quentin. One of the cases, a class-action suit in U.S. federal court, was launched 14 years ago challenging conditions in the “super maximum” Pelican Bay State Prison. The case revealed a culture of terror, brutality and excessive force among the guards at Pelican Bay; as one court-appointed investigator described it, “rather than ... correcting the prisoners, some correctional officers acquire a prisoner’s mentality: They form gangs, align with gangs and spread the code of silence.”

In response to what went on at Pelican Bay -- as well as at Corcoran State Prison and elsewhere in the system -- the Legislature five years ago dramatically expanded the powers of the state inspector general to oversee California’s prisons and investigate misconduct.

But the code of silence has remained in place, guards and prison officials have continued to stonewall, and the Legislature’s bipartisan majority eviscerated the inspector general’s office by cutting its annual budget from $11 million in 2001-02 to less than $3 million today.

Given what he calls a “miserable” record of complying with the law, the federal judge in the Pelican Bay case last month threatened to put the entire state prison system into federal receivership -- effectively taking it over entirely.

In a last-ditch effort to maintain control of the system, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed a new inspector general and promised to increase the annual budget of the office slightly. He also is expected to install at least five more deputy inspectors general in the next two months. Before his recent action, the governor had proposed further reducing the inspector general’s personnel, from 24 to six positions -- insufficient for a unit that investigated 1,400 allegations of guard misconduct in the last three years.

The second case, brought against the California Youth Authority in Alameda County Superior Court, concerns the treatment of juvenile offenders and reveals the state’s complete retreat from its long-standing policy of attempting to rehabilitate, rather than punish, young prisoners. The routine use of pepper spray and overmedication for controlling young offenders “regardless of the youth’s mental status” (as described in experts’ reports to the attorney general and the Superior Court), the practice of “educating” them in mesh cages where textbooks were not allowed (recently abandoned after adverse publicity) and perpetual 23-hour-a-day lockdowns -- at a projected annual taxpayer cost of $90,000 per youth -- are symptoms of deep dysfunction. As in the federal case, state officials will need court approval of a reform plan and a funding plan in the near future -- or face new sanctions.

A failure of governance has led us into this mess. California has become the global leader in prison construction and sentencing, and its prisons have become brutal places for children and adults alike. Polls show that 3 out of 4 Californians prefer rehabilitation and prevention over sending more young people to prison. But neither political party seems willing to stand up to the prison guards union, whose jobs and million-dollar annual war chest depend on the size of the inmate population.

To begin to turn this around, several steps need to be taken. The governor needs to sign legislation restoring media access to the prisons, including the right of reporters to interview inmates. The iron curtain favored by the previous two governors only allowed a secretive organizational culture to grow like mushrooms in the dark.

Next, the Legislature should prepare bills -- backed by adequate funding -- to codify the court’s “code of silence” prohibition, to build a firewall between the guards union and the system’s investigations unit, and generally to bring Pelican Bay, the CYA and the prison oversight investigation system into compliance with the law. The challenge will be immense, perhaps even impossible, because a culture suited more for paramilitarism than rehabilitation will be extremely difficult to legislate away.

That is why the federal court may have to step in and put the prison system into receivership -- and why state officials should consider the relatively drastic step of transferring the CYA to the jurisdiction of the state Health and Human Services agency, where the focus would be on rehabilitation rather than punishment.

California now leads the country in its prison build-up of the last two decades. But that’s not what it takes to solve our problems. Across the country, violent crime rates have fallen in states that never copied California’s prison buildup. It is time to think outside the box -- or, in this case, the cell.