Lawmakers Question Prison-Agency Order

A state of emergency enacted in California’s prison system to ease overcrowding -- made by administrative order but not made public -- created a backlash in the Capitol on Tuesday.

Angry lawmakers, who learned of the April 1 directive Monday night, questioned if the California Department of Corrections artificially inflated the inmate population to avoid budget cuts. And they demanded to know why they weren’t informed of a supposed influx of 1,200 inmates from cash-strapped county jails.

The influx is forcing prisons to triple-bunk inmates in two-person cells -- a practice condemned Tuesday by lawyers for inmates.

“I’m amazed it is a state of emergency and nobody outside of CDC even knows this,” said state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles). “This could be a way to avoid closing prisons.... These numbers can easily be inflated.”

Lawmakers announced plans to move ahead with hearings on the issue, opening a new chapter in the unfolding crisis engulfing the state’s $6-billion correctional system.

Corrections officials defended their actions, saying the inmate increase is only temporary and will not result in the department asking for more money -- even if it does drive up the overtime budget.

Meanwhile, a coalition of advocacy groups unveiled a proposal to overhaul the California Youth Authority, under scrutiny since the suicides of two inmates and the videotaped beatings of two others.

The uproar comes as California’s youth and adult prisons and parole programs are undergoing scrutiny from the Legislature, the courts, state watchdog agencies and reformers.

In January, a federal investigator reported that the Department of Corrections was plagued by a “code of silence” that protected rogue guards from punishment and was condoned by managers at the uppermost levels.

Shortly after, a watchdog panel issued a scathing indictment of the department’s parole effort, calling it a “billion-dollar failure” that ensures two out of three ex-convicts wind up back in prison before completing parole.

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Negative Reports

More recently, a series of reports portrayed the youth penal system as overrun with violence and failing to provide adequate educational, medical and mental health services to its young inmates. Those reports came as the California Youth Authority already was reeling from the suicides of two teenagers who hanged themselves in the cell they shared.

In the past, such disclosures have drawn little notice from most lawmakers. In fact, the Legislature had been focused on adopting tougher penalties for crime, pushing the prison population ever higher.

But this year, two state senators -- Democrats Romero and Jackie Speier of Hillsborough -- have made overhauling the penal system a priority, holding a series of often dramatic oversight hearings.

Next week, they will take up the declaration of emergency issued internally by the department. Corrections officials say that order is the result of 1,200 unexpected inmates coming to them from county jails, and it allows them to triple-bunk inmates and reconfigure their space in other ways to make more room.

Lawyers who represent inmates expressed concerns about the triple-bunking, and said the practice invariably increases stress and conflict behind prison walls. They also said that, if maintained over the long-term, such cramped conditions could be a violation of prisoners’ civil rights.

“Triple-bunking shows that the CDC is busting at the seams, and overcrowding can lead to serious violence, endangering staff and prisoners,” said Donald Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office.

Department spokesman J.P. Tremblay said that the practice has been used in the past by the department when prisons are overcrowded and that triple-bunking is safe.

Tremblay said this is not the first time the department has declared a state of emergency. It has been done five times in the last eight years, he said, and the Legislature was never involved.

“We have to be able to deal with population ebbs and flows in our institutions,” he said. But he added that if lawmakers wish to be notified, the department will change its practice to do so in the future.

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Suspicions

But lawmakers of both parties are suspicious of such a directive coming while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is drafting his revised budget. Especially when the department is running as much as $544.8 million in the red, and is under orders to cut its spending by that amount plus an additional $400 million.

They noted that the department initially projected the inmate population would decline this spring. “This isn’t the first time lawmakers and taxpayers have learned of inaccuracies and cost overruns in the department,” said Assemblyman Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks).

But he rejected calls by Democrats to release some nonviolent offenders and older inmates to ease overcrowding.

“We can’t allow soft-on-crime liberals to use this as an excuse to let people out on the streets,” Cox said.

Fueling the concerns of lawmakers is the department’s acknowledgment that the emergency may result in more overtime costs at a time when the governor is trying to cut back on those costs. Generous overtime payments and benefits granted to prison guards under former Gov. Gray Davis have played a large role in the massive cost overruns at the department.

Tremblay said the department is still planning to cut the $400 million Schwarzenegger is demanding.

Schwarzenegger, vowing to “clean the place up,” has appointed new leaders at the Youth Authority, the Department of Corrections and the cabinet-level agency that oversees the system.

On Tuesday, two Assembly members added their voices to the throng of reform advocates, promoting one bill that would reform prison education and another that would lift a ban on food stamps for former inmates convicted in drug cases. The author of that bill, Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), called the food stamp ban a huge barrier for parolees trying to rejoin society and rebuild their lives. Leno added that “for all the billions of dollars we are spending on corrections, we are doing most everything wrong, because ... we are not lowering our prisoner population and we are not preparing inmates for their return to communities.”

The juvenile system was also the focus of renewed attention Tuesday, as a coalition of more than two dozen state and national advocacy groups released a plan for transforming the Youth Authority.

Calling the Youth Authority an “abysmal failure” because roughly 70% of its parolees eventually return to prison, the reformers recommend shifting funding -- and many of the state’s inmates -- to community programs. There, housed in smaller groups and with more intensive treatment, youths would have a better shot at rehabilitation, the coalition said.

“We need to phase out the large, prison-like institutions that make up the CYA, because that model was discredited decades ago,” said Lenore Anderson, a lawyer with the group Books Not Bars.

Lourdes Duarte of San Francisco, whose son has been in the CYA for five years, appeared at the coalition’s press conference to support the plan: “When they sent my son to CYA, the judge promised he would be rehabilitated. But he has only gotten worse.”

To publicize their blueprint and remember the youths who committed suicide in December, the groups will hold candlelight vigils today at 7 p.m. in nine cities, including Los Angeles.