On Monday, the Supreme Court sided with a previous lower court decision and ordered the state of California to release up to 46,000 inmates to help reduce overcrowding throughout its prison system. This landmark case and ruling has resulted in one of the largest prison-release orders in U.S. history.
As anticipated, there is a strong dichotomy that exists relative to the highest court’s prodigious decision. Certain critics of the ruling believe that the release of the prisoners into society will inevitably lead to more crime and violence in California. Conversely, proponents (e.g., American Civil Liberties Union) of the release order posit that justice has finally been served.
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, “Since 1990, the number of prisoners in California has risen three times faster than the overall adult population, with African Americans having the highest incarceration rates of any group (5,125 per 100,000 adults in the population for men and 346 per 100,000 for women, compared to 1,159 and 62, respectively, for all adults).” This significant increase in inmates has resulted in California’s adult prison system holding nearly double its design capacity of 80,000 prisoners and egregious violations of constitutional guarantees.
In August 2009, relative to the cases Plata v. Schwarzenegger and Coleman v. Schwarzenegger, a federal three-judge court ruled that, in fact, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) medical services violated the Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment and failed to provide basic medical, mental health and dental care for inmates in California.
Additionally, the three-judge court appointed an independent entity to run the state’s prison health-care system and ordered the release of 40,000 inmates to reduce overcrowding, which was deemed as the primary cause of the violations. Then-Governor Schwarzenegger and then-California Attorney General Jerry Brown disagreed with the ruling and filed an appeal with the Supreme Court.
Regardless of one’s position on this issue, the Supreme Court was resolute in answering two important questions via its opinion: “Is there a need to reform our current criminal justice system or should it be left alone? And, should the prison population in federal, state and local jails be reduced to remedy unconstitutional conditions that may exist in these correctional facilities?”
Currently, there are more than 2.3 million inmates in our country’s prisons and jails with an estimated 44 percent of all prisoners being African-American. Multiple studies have shown that by 2011, prison expenditures will ultimately cost taxpayers almost $75 billion. These objective statistics bespeak of the fact that our country has become addicted to incarceration and are holding more inmates than many prisons were originally designed for. Relative to basic medical care, two Bureau of Justice Statistics studies have indicated that “at least 800,000 of these 2.3 million inmates suffer from a chronic condition that requires medical attention: diabetes, hypertension, a prior heart attack or a previously diagnosed cancer, among a few other diagnoses.”
Unfortunately, with an inmate dying every 6 to 7 days due to deficient medical attention, it has become very apparent that many of these prisoners with chronic conditions don’t receive necessary care when incarcerated. Is it possible to reverse the alarming trends of overcrowding and lack of medical care throughout our nation’s prisons? Absolutely!Criminal justice reform is not a novel idea. During the Clinton Administration, President Clinton and then-Attorney General Janet Reno consistently voiced measures to reform the criminal justice system with community-based policing, the Police Corps, education and job training. Unfortunately, due to sensationalist crime coverage that was purposed to incite fear and conservative “law and order” proponents, the energy behind reform fell by the way side.
Now, with this current ruling, reform will likely come back to the forefront of substantive issues. While Governor Brown and other critics postulate that releasing certain inmates is not a wise mechanism for modifying our criminal justice system, I disagree and believe that it is a necessary starting point. The following measures should also be thoroughly analyzed and possibly implemented to help establish a new direction for our nation’s criminal justice system:
1) Carefully release non-violent offenders. Well-documented evidence suggests that nearly one million of those incarcerated in federal, state and local jails are nonviolent drug and chronic traffic offenders- most of whom are African-Americans.
In lieu of having these non-violent offenders contribute to prison crowding, it may prove beneficial to carefully divert such low-risk prisoners to community-based programs or other alternative programs such as drug rehabilitation, electronic monitoring, educational sentencing and boot camps. This would likely make it much easier to find space for violent offenders, who are far more deserving of incarceration.
2) Congress should seriously consider criminal justice reform. Historically, Congress has been reluctant to seriously consider criminal justice reform. Currently, both chambers and sides of the aisle agree, for the most part, that our criminal justice system needs to move in a new direction.
The House recently passed the National Criminal Justice Commission Act that would establish a bipartisan commission to review the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, the Act is still awaiting Senate approval; thus, there has been little action since the passage of this Act.
Upon approval by both chambers of Congress, it would prove beneficial if the panel can perform a thorough analysis and publish a report of negative findings and best practices that can be acted upon in the form of reformed public policy that will reduce overcrowding, reduce racial disparity, ensure proper medical care and help taxpayers save money.
3) More resources should be allocated for re-entry programs. A primary way to help ensure that released offenders do not become habitual criminals and to assist in successful reintegration into communities is via reentry programs.
Oftentimes, these programs that have helped myriad ex-offenders through vocational training, employment assistance and other initiatives struggle with resources. More grants, money and manpower would prove beneficial in helping these programs achieve goals that benefit society as a whole.
