Major Prison Reform Eludes Lawmakers

It has been a year of top-to-bottom scandal in California’s sprawling prison system.

Officer beatings of two young inmates were caught on videotape and broadcast nationwide. A convict bled to death in his cell after howling for hours. Whistle-blowers testified about corruption and coverups -- while wearing bulletproof vests. And severe crowding forced some lockups to house inmates in the TV lounge.

Last month, a federal judge in San Francisco weighed in on the mess, threatening an unprecedented takeover of the prisons. But the Legislature has been cool to calls for a shake-up of the $6-billion-a-year system.

Despite a series of dramatic hearings by two state senators investigating corrections, lawmakers declined to adopt many substantial prison reforms before closing their legislative session last week.

“A year ago, I believed we had a real window of opportunity to reform the prison system in a drastic way,” said Dan Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. “But all we’ve really had is empty rhetoric. No one has the political courage to take on this system and demand real change.”

A handful of prison bills -- addressing such things as inmate health care and smoking behind bars -- found the votes needed for passage. One measure took aim at the so-called code of silence that protects rogue guards from punishment. Another -- considered a long shot for a governor’s signature -- would force the state to beef up inmate rehabilitation.

But most of the bills will result in mere tinkering with a 164,000-inmate system that needs an overhaul, critics say. Even state Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough), who joined fellow Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) in spending much of the year on prison troubles, declared herself unsatisfied.

Although several of her bills won approval, Speier’s most ambitious measure -- which sought to ban officials from building new prisons until they reduced the state’s sky-high recidivism rate -- failed.

“The gravity of the problems in the Department of Corrections has not sunk in for some members of the Legislature,” Speier said. “They commend Sen. Romero and I for taking it on, and tell us to keep it up. But when it comes to putting up votes to remedy problems, they simply won’t do it if the prison guards’ union is opposed.”

Speier’s point about the union’s influence was underscored in the final days of the session, when Assembly members faced a Romero bill seeking to remove a major barrier to investigations of guard misconduct. Breakdowns in such investigations have been a key complaint of U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson, who has threatened to place the prison system into receivership.

Killing the bill was a top priority of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., which represents the guards. Winning approval was a top priority of Romero, chairwoman of an oversight committee on corrections.

After a bitter lobbying fight spanning two weeks, the senator lost. The defeat, an angry Romero said after Thursday’s final vote, “was about raw power and privilege.”

“Today, power and privilege were ceded to the CCPOA,” she said. “I’m extremely disappointed.... Justice took a walk.”

Romero’s measure, SB 1731, centered on a clause in the labor contract that critics say allows the guards union to interfere with disciplinary investigations. It requires investigators to turn over information about a probe -- including the accuser’s name -- before internal affairs interviews are conducted. Investigators say that practice deters inmates and whistle-blowers from reporting misconduct for fear of retaliation.

Among those urging passage of the bill was Inspector General Matthew Cate, the governor’s new watchdog over prisons. By providing the suspect with the victim’s name and statement prior to the investigation, the state is “practically inviting the suspect to collude with potential witnesses, invent an alibi or intimidate the alleged victim into recanting,” Cate said in a letter to Assembly members.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley also wrote in support, saying the disclosure clause grants prison guards a privilege enjoyed by no other branch of law enforcement. And in a June report, the federal court monitor working for Judge Henderson said the contract provision “renders fair investigations into the abuse of force almost impossible.”

The bill sailed through the state Senate. On Aug. 17, it landed in the Assembly and received only 31 votes -- 10 shy of the number needed for passage. Furious, Romero spent several days lobbying members, then brought the measure back Thursday for a second try.

Union lobbyists worked the Assembly as well. In meetings and a printed “floor alert,” they warned lawmakers that a “yes” vote was fraught with peril. Passage, they said, would amount to improper tampering with a labor contract outside of the state’s collective bargaining process. They also argued that guards need information about inmate complaints against them so they can protect themselves.

Don Novey, the union’s former president and a legendary figure in Sacramento, was on hand the day of the vote, mingling in the Capitol’s corridors. Although Novey is not a registered lobbyist, his presence did not go unnoticed by legislators or their aides.

In the end, the bill went down again, a defeat one critic of the prison system called “shameful.”

“After all the scandal, all the hearings, all the warnings from the federal court, the Legislature was incapable of taking corrective action,” said Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office, a nonprofit firm that frequently sues over prison conditions.

Despite that view, a few bills adding teeth to investigations of wrongdoing won approval. One stiffens penalties for prison officials who retaliate against whistle-blowers, while another expands the powers of the inspector general and makes public his reports on corrections.

A third bill, SB 1431, creates a code of conduct for prison employees and establishes a standardized list of penalties for misdeeds, including excessive force and being drunk on duty. Previously, penalties varied from prison to prison.

A fourth measure clarifies something the Schwarzenegger administration created in response to warnings from the federal court -- a “bureau of review” that will oversee internal investigations to ensure they are thorough and fair.

After a string of disclosures about the soaring costs and shoddy quality of inmate healthcare, lawmakers also passed a bill ensuring that prisoners who are seen by community doctors receive the treatment those physicians prescribe.

Conservative Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy (R-Monrovia) said he introduced the bill after prison doctors refused for several years to provide a mammogram to an inmate who later died of complications from breast cancer.

“The state wound up paying a $350,000 settlement to [the inmate] before her death,” Mountjoy said. “All of this -- the loss of life and the cost to the taxpayers -- could have been avoided if the prison system had simply provided adequate medical treatment.”

Notably absent was any significant legislation on the California Youth Authority. Earlier this year, the youth authority was hammered in a series of reports by state-hired experts as a place of extreme violence providing substandard education, medical care and mental health treatment to its 4,000 inmates.

Romero introduced legislation targeting the youth authority, but it failed in the Assembly. Prison officials say they expect to make major improvements once the state settles a class-action lawsuit filed over conditions in the youth authority.

“The people in power are saying all the right things,” said Sue Burrell of the Youth Law Center, which aids juvenile offenders. “But it’s frustrating to have nothing tangible accomplished after everything that happened this year.”

With the Legislature’s work concluded for now, prison watchdog groups hope Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger makes good on his vow to “clean up the prison mess” he said was left by former Gov. Gray Davis.

Schwarzenegger has appointed a new leadership team in corrections and toured Mule Creek State Prison, east of Sacramento.

While pledging to run a system “where violent and dangerous criminals are kept behind bars,” Schwarzenegger said he also wants penitentiaries that are “committed to rehabilitate our prisoners, to give them education, vocational training, to teach them skills so when they get out, they are successful.”