If prison costs rob education, what then?
SUNDAY, MAY 29, 2011 AT MIDNIGHT
The dramatic drop in crime rates in San Diego County – with the exception of hate crimes and bank robberies – mirrored to varying extents around the country, cries out for explanation. It defies the premise that economic crisis usually leads to increased crime.
Here, though, citizens must be cautious. Consider an election debate last year between the top contenders for California attorney general. Los Angeles County District Attorney Tom Cooley, who was to lose to his counterpart from San Francisco, Kamala Harris, asserted that historically low crime rates in California were due primarily to increased mass incarceration.
Cooley’s assertion may not be correct.
California’s prisons are certainly operating at nearly double their designed capacity, leading to federal court orders to cut the population by 33,000 prisoners, orders affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court last week. The forced reduction is a controversial move, since California has the highest recidivism rate in the United States, with two-thirds of prisoners returning within three years of release. To comply with the orders, money is being diverted from prisoner rehabilitation, social services and education, all associated with successful prisoner reintegration.
California’s mass incarceration boom, the nation’s largest, saw prisoners increase from 25,000 in 1980 to some 143,000 today. It was supported by the prison guards union, the most powerful lobby in the state, and set the pace for prison expansion in the nation as a whole. With only 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States now has 25 percent of the world’s