When Governor Schwarzenegger made a proposal in January to reduce the prison budget, he was met with opposition because reimbursement to the counties for housing prisoners was not included. Now, he has made anothe rproposal, and that one is also being opposed.
The proposal would move more than 15,000 nonviolent offenders to county jails from the prisons in which they are now housed. The cost of housing a prisoner in a county jail is $12,000 a year, far less than housing the the same person in prison would cost. The plan doesn't discuss where the prisoners already housed in the county jails would go. According to an article in the Sacramento Bee on (insert date), sheriffs are already releasing nonviolent prisoners early because of overcrowding. In a system designed to hold 80,000 prisoners, but actually is holding 150,000, overcrowding is a serious issue. The Federal Court has ordered California to reduce its prison population to 110,000 within a two year period.
Reducing correctional spending through the privitization of prisons has several organizations upset. In a joint statement from Drug Policy Alliance, ACLU of Northern California, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and Families to Amend California's Three Strikes Law, the lack if sentencing reform was criticized. The organizations and their supporters want Gov. Schwarzenegger to lower the rate of incarceration, something they say his predecessors failed to do. Since 1980 the number of California prisoners has increased over 500%. A large number of people are incarcerated for petty drug charges, at a cost of over $1 billion. Releasing these prisoners. with, or without, electrical monitoring devices is a start to cutting budget costs and reducing prison overcrowding, say the proponents of these ideas.
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