Prisons Don’t Really Get Tough on Crime

Too many public initiatives foster an attitude that society’s problems can be solved in isolation from one another. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the area of criminal and juvenile justice.

You don’t need to be a criminologist to realize that someone who is undereducated, who has no job and who is addicted to drugs is likely to get into trouble. It is clear that the quality of life in Watts or the Tenderloin affects the safety of residents in Beverly Hills or Pacific Heights.

And yet, when we approach the problems of crime, we habitually focus on punishing the offender as though that offender operates in isolation from the societal conditions around him or her. We are willing to abandon all semblance of fiscal austerity in an elusive attempt to buy safety through jail and prison construction. Over the past 10 years Californians have watched their prison population double while “get-tough” politicians promised safer streets. It is now obvious that our costly prisons are unrelated to public safety as crime rates remain far too high.

If this approach to justice were just meaningless, it would simply be unfortunate. But it is tragic when the programs designed to provide all of California’s citizens with a decent standard of living, and by extension to reduce crime, are cut in order to fuel a system that is a glaring failure. As state and local budgets bump up against spending limits imposed by what is commonly known as the Gann initiative, programs must be cut. This mandatory trade-off is not adequately reflected when citizens vote on one-dimensional bond issues or pass single-issue initiatives. Furthermore, few elected officials are willing to confront the voters with this reality for fear of being considered “soft on crime.”

Yet the problem is real for both state and local governments. According to the legislative analyst’s office, “Without changes in policy, the Legislature will have to devote an increasing share of the state’s general fund budget to support the growing costs of state correctional programs. This may require that funds be redirected from education, health and welfare programs . . . . (Also), information collected by the County Supervisors Assn. of California shows that county costs for operating jails are growing (substantially faster) than discretionary revenue is . . . . These trends suggest that current funding patterns can continue only with substantial expenditure reductions in other local programs.”

Local and statewide examples of this trade-off abound:

--The state of California, currently involved in “the largest prison constructionprogram ever attempted by any governmental entity,” failed to provide essential education improvements. Estimates place upwards of 50% of inmates as illiterate. Is it just coincidental that our state, which has one of the nation’s highest average classroom sizes, also has the biggest prison population?

--The County of Sonoma, which will open a 404-bed jail in 1988, recently initiated sharp cutbacks in all county programs. According to the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, the proposed county budget “reflects substantial increases in criminal-justice spending at the expense of other county services.” Local county drug-treatment experts note that residential drug programs available to the county have decreased from 17 to 1. About 75% of all offenders are believed to suffer from some sort of substance-abuse problem.

--San Francisco allocated $8 million for a new jail during the same fiscal year in which it reduced the education budget by $10 million--an almost dollar-for-dollar trade-off. City officials openly acknowledge the increasing incidence of juvenile crime likely to result from cutting extracurricular and sports programs. Furthermore, the city’s only alcohol dry-out facility stops accepting referrals at 5 p.m., when it must double as a homeless shelter. After 5, public inebriates must go to a seriously overcrowded jail.

The measure of an effective criminal-justice system is to have fewer victims, not more inmates. In the last 10 years the state prison population has increased by 172%. No private industry could succeed with a failure rate like that of our state and local corrections agencies, and yet corrections is the state’s boom industry.

In some ironic way, taking from our schools to give to our jails is appropriate. For when we cut back on basic educational services to our children we guarantee that a larger percentage of them will end up imprisoned.