Rethink Prison Policies

In the last year, state investigators have uncovered scores of problems in California prisons, from substance-abusing inmates to guards goading prisoners into fistfights. Young wards of the system have been drugged to keep them quiet or brutally disciplined. In his budget last week, Gov. Gray Davis sensibly recognized the need for more penal system scrutiny, allocating $2.3 million to fund a new inspector general’s office to investigate wrongdoing in and by the prisons.

Davis won’t be able to completely rout out the problems, however, until he brings new blood into the system’s leadership. The resignations of three top officials in the California Youth Authority, the division that oversees juvenile inmates, give the governor an opportunity to do that.

California does not have the only troubled prison system in the country, but by several measures it has fallen behind other states in implementing methods that reduce prison violence and heighten public safety.

For instance, California officials now assess parolees’ risks based on their most recent criminal offenses, giving short shrift to telling variables like age, history of substance abuse or mental illness and attitudes toward society. Even more antiquated is the state’s 1960s-era system for tracking parolees; it does not employ effective high technologies like electronic monitoring bracelets. In Florida, the bracelets allow parolees to be tracked as they work or attend classes.

The department also has yet to rein in substance abuse and looming health problems. John M. Vierling, medical director of liver transplantation at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, recently told state legislators that the Department of Corrections appears unprepared to deal with the soaring rate of hepatitis C infections in its prisons. The virus that causes the disease, often communicated by prisoners using infected needles for tattoos or intravenous drugs, can cause fatal liver failure. Infections acquired in prison are likely to be spread further when a prisoner is released. Hepatitis C currently afflicts about half a million Californians in and out of prison, far more victims than in any other state.

State legislative leaders haven’t done much to help. In Sacramento, prison reform remains a highly charged issue, dominated and held back by ideology.

Political posturing will not solve problems like the spread of hepatitis C and the failure of prison officials to keep track of violent parolees. Solutions will come only when smart policies are crafted by prison officials working in tandem with legislators and the governor.