JOINT STATEMENT FROM:
Drug Policy Alliance, ACLU of Northern California, Ella Baker
Center for Human Rights, and Families to Amend California's Three
Strikes
Contact: Tommy McDonald (510) 229 5215 or Margaret Dooley-Sammuli (213) 291 4190
Advocates Criticize Plan that Lacks Any Sentencing Reform
SACRAMENTO – During his State of the State address today, Governor
Schwarzenegger proposed a constitutional amendment that would bar the
state from spending more on prisons than on higher education, and that
would allow privatization of California’s prison system. Advocates
applauded the call for significant cuts, but criticized the governor
for leaning on a panacea of privatization.
"The governor is right to push for big cut in corrections, but the
problem of our overcrowded prisons isn't a question of union
corrections officers versus nonunion ones, or for-profit prisons versus
state-owned prisons. It's about addressing the massive sentencing
inflation that prior generations of governors and Legislatures indulged
in. It’s about treating nonviolent or low-cost property crimes as
misdemeanors, and treating only violent crime or big money crimes as
felonies," said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy state director for the
Drug Policy Alliance in Southern California.
The governor's proposed amendment would require the state to cut
prisons spending from 11% of the state general fund (or about $10
billion) to a new limit of 7% (under $6.5 billion) by 2014-15; it would
also institute a new minimum for higher education spending of 10% of
the general fund (up from the current level of 7.5%). According to the
Governor's office, these limits could be suspended "during a fiscal
emergency or other declared emergency" or at any time "by a two-thirds
vote of the Legislature." A two-thirds vote of the Legislature is
required to pass the state budget each year.
"The Governor signed a budget last year that he said would cut
corrections spending by $1.2 billion, but the state is on schedule to
spend more on corrections than it did last year – not less," said Kris
Lev-Twombly, director of programs for the Ella Baker Center for Human
Rights. "Now the governor comes back with another promise to cut
spending, and again no plan to achieve it. We urge the Legislature to
pass sentencing reform this year to achieve savings now, and not just
hope that the governor's latest gimmick starts working in 2014."
California's prison population has grown by over 500% since 1980,
rising from under 30,000 to about 170,000 at end-2009. For example,
over 24,000 people are locked up in state prison for nothing more than
a petty drug offense at a cost of over $1 billion a year.
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