No escape

IT ISN’T SURPRISING that the drug treatment programs in California prisons are a billion-dollar failure, as the state inspector general reported last week. Their failure has been amply documented for years. What would be surprising is the governor and the Legislature doing anything about it.

The inspector general’s report is only the latest scathing critique of the corrections system, whose healthcare programs are so dangerous to inmates that they had to be taken over by a federal receiver and whose overcrowding crisis has become so bad that the state may soon be forced to start releasing felons early. The inspector general revealed that the state spends $143 million a year on rehab programs for prisoners that do nothing to help them go straight.

The message of the report isn’t that prison drug treatment is a waste of time and money. It’s that if you’re going to do it wrong, you might as well not do it at all. The prison programs don’t spend enough time on inmates, don’t involve enough counselors and don’t keep participants separate from the general prison population, which they must do to be successful.

Further, they are administered by a bureaucracy that has been asleep at the switch for years. Though the state has spent $8.2 million since 1997 on studies that have pointed out the many problems with the rehab program, the reports’ recommendations have been ignored.

The latest report seems to be prompting some attention. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has given the drug treatment operation a higher profile within the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and appointed a new director. But that won’t scratch the surface of what ails California’s prison system.

A federal judge has given California until June to show progress in reducing overcrowding or he might impose a cap on prison admissions. Schwarzenegger had hoped to relieve some of the pressure by transferring inmates out of state, but after a Superior Court judge ruled last week that the transfers were illegal, that may no longer be an option. It was a temporary solution at best. So is the latest plan from the governor and top lawmakers, announced Thursday, to consider early release for old and feeble inmates.

What’s needed is a comprehensive overhaul of California’s parole practices, so that the state stops sending nonviolent ex-cons back to prison for technical violations of their parole conditions. California also needs a sentencing board to revisit and retool sentencing policies and more job training. Schwarzenegger has proposed some of these reforms, though so far his suggestions haven’t taken the form of legislation.

It’s well past time for the Legislature to rouse itself from its traditional lethargy on prison issues. Voters don’t put prisons high on the priority list, which is why the problems have been allowed to fester for so long. But if a judge imposes a cap that puts dangerous criminals back on the streets, that’s going to change.