Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Prisons In Crisis: A State Of Emergency In California

PRISONS IN CRISIS--A STATE OF EMERGENCY IN CALIFORNIA

Part 1

Grassroots Prison Radio presents--"Prisons In Crisis--A
State Of Emergency In California."

(To SFX 1/Sound collage)

Robert Sillen "It's sort of unbelievable--this is California in
the 21st century."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger "When I took office 3-and-a-half
years ago, we had inherited a broken prison system that was
dangerously overcrowded and was totally out of control"

Raymond "In my first term, when I went to prison, I was cut in
my throat right here and I had to be in hospital for three
weeks."

Michael Bien "My clients are suffering right now, the
correctional officers and the medical staff are all suffering
right now."

Pat Nolan "We're locking away thirty years to life people who
stole six or seven childrens' videos or someone who stole a
sandwich."

Chuck Alexander "The public's in an uproar about a particular
crime that's happening--let's lock 'em up and throw away the
key."

Dangerous, dysfunctional, violent, out-of-control,
unconstitutional are some of the words that describe
California's prison crisis. The state now has the largest
prison system in the nation. With its prison population
expanding rapidly over the last 25 years, California has failed
to provide prisoners with basic services such as adequate
housing and medical care. (To Actuality 1)
"Our safety's in jeopardy because of the crisis
in our prisons."
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency
in 2006. But progress on prison reforms has continued to move
at a glacial pace and the federal courts have threatened to
intercede. I'm JoAnn Mar. In the next hour, we'll take a
closer look at the California prison crisis--how it started and
solutions for addressing it.
(To SFX 2/CIM Hispanic prisoners yelling out exercise routines)
In a lounge that used to hold sofas and chairs, there are
now rows of make-shift beds. This day room is now a dormitory
that houses 54 prisoners. The California Institute for Men in
the town of Chino, east of Los Angeles is like many of the
state's overcrowded prisons.
(Bring up SFX 2 for a few seconds) CIM is at 200 percent
capacity. The men are exercising in the day room because the
gymnasium is occupied. It too has been converted to dormitory
space.
(To SFX 3/"Triple bunks, two TVs, the rest are double bunks
....")
Inside the gym, it's stifling hot with no ventilation.
Prisoners are sitting or standing idly by their bunks. CIM ran
out of space years ago and the gym is now housing 200 inmates.
One of those prisoners is Raymond. (To Actuality 2)
"We only have four toilets, so the constant
trying to use the bathrooms and the urinals or
what have you--the stench in itself is
overwhelming. So they urinate on the floor or
have feces on the floor that we have to deal with
on a daily basis."

Raymond has served time in state prison on a forgery
conviction. He's now returned to CIM on a minor parole
violation and he's serving another five months in the
overcrowded gym. (To Actuality 3)
"It's extremely bad. So you have more people
coming in with more problems and more calamities
to add to the frustration of the people that are
there. Some of these people have no respect or
compassion. So when they come here, they take
their aggression on the next man, which is right
next to you, again because the bunks are so close
to you. And then in turn, turmoil, fights,
arguments constantly. The noise level is beyond
measure, on a constant level. It's very very
hard."

(To SFX 4/CIM ambience for a few seconds, then to Actuality 4)
"I was amazed they didn't have a riot every day
in that facility."

Dennis Yates is mayor of Chino, now home to three state
prisons. In the last ten years, Chino's housing development and
shopping centers have expanded rapidly and the prisons no longer
fit in with the city's growth plans for attracting new business
and tourists. The town is concerned with public safety. In
December 2006, a 700-man riot erupted at CIM. After the riot,
Mayor Yates toured the prison--he says it's even worse now than
when he visited fifteen years ago. (To Actuality 5)
"I feel really bad for the correctional officers
working--I can't imagine working in that
atmosphere. It is horrendous. I have to tell
you--that if I was ever convicted and sent to
prison, I would prefer they send me to the Humane
Society and put me in one of those cages. It's a
lot cleaner and more sanitary. That's a fact--
and more room too, obviously more room."

Overcrowded conditions have caused serious health hazards
and contributed to the on-going crisis in prison medical care.
The California Department of Corrections has been under repeated
court order to improve medical care, but has failed to do so.
Finally in 2005, the federal courts stepped in and Judge Thelton
Henderson took the unprecedented step of placing California's
entire prison medical system into federal receivership. Health
administrator Robert Sillen was the first federal receiver
appointed by Judge Henderson. He was charged with the task of
bringing prison medical care up to constitutional standards.
(To Actuality 6)
"It's just a horrid, horrid situation, which one
really has to see in order to believe. I had
never been in a state prison before I went to San
Quentin on day 2 of the receivership and it was
truly an eye opener."

(Start SFX 5/San Quentin gym ambience under)
Here in San Quentin's gymnasium, the basketball court is
packed with hundreds of prisoners and double bunk beds. This is
where Sillen got a first-hand look at a medical system he calls
"broken beyond repair." (To Actuality 7)
"What are purportedly clinics were very, very
tiny spaces without any real equipment. The
emergency rooms didn't have sutures and gauze.
The paint was chipping, it was just in total
dishevelment. They couldn't get supplies, the
sewage from upper tiers was running into a clinic
in the lower tiers. That clinic, in quotes, was
a double-size cell with plastic sheeting over it
to help try to keep the drippings out of it. The
dirt and the filth, the age of the facility, over
150 years old--this was a situation I had never
imagined was bad as it was."

Substandard conditions and staff shortages have also led to
separate prison litigation, challenging the quality of dental
care, disability access, and mental health care. It's estimated
that 25 percent of all California prisoners are afflicted with
serious mental health problems such as schizophrenia or bipolar
disorder. The number of suicides in California prisons is
nearly twice the national average in other prisons. Attorney
Michael Bien has brought several lawsuits on behalf of mentally
ill prisoners. (To Actuality 8)
"Why does that happen? It happens because we
don't have the appropriate clinicians and
treatment space, pharmacists and nurses to
actually identify people who need help quick
enough, get them to places where they can receive
help quick enough, and get them the appropriate
care they need. Far more than half, almost 3/4's
of the suicides were preventable. That's
shocking--it shouldn't be happening. Just like
Mr. Sillen, the receiver in the medical care case
has said that people are dying of diseases in
California prisons that they should never die of-
-anyone with basic care, their lives would be
saved."

(To SFX 6/Stark ambience "G3 and 4, we about to open your doors.
Open all the doors--every last one of them.")

California's juvenile detention facilities have serious
problems as well. Fighting, violence, and numerous suicides
have plagued the juvenile system for the last fifteen years.
These youth prisons have been called the worst in the nation.
(To Actuality 9)
"It's rowdy, it's always riots, there's always
racial tension between the blacks and the browns,
and it's always something happening. People
getting sliced up or getting stabbed. I seen
quite a bit of violence."

Mario was fourteen when he was sent to state juvenile
detention for attempted murder. For the last ten years, he's
been in and out of several state youth facilities and has seen
his share of violence. (To Actuality 10)

"It's nothing new to me. There's quite a bit of
fights. You always see three people jumping one
guy or seven on one. Or sometimes you get
fifteen on two. And a lot of these guys will go
out of their way to jump barbed wire fences just
to get to two African-Americans or vice versa.
That's the gang mentality. And that's what they
see--it's all about the race, it's all about
their gang."

(To SFX 7/music for a few seconds, then to Actuality 11)

"It's around you 24/7. In order to survive in
this environment, you gotta bang because that's
how it's set up. It's either you Mexican or you
black."

Brandon committed robbery at age 15 and has spent several
years in state youth detention. (To Actuality 12)
"Sometimes, I don't even want to come out of my
room, 'cause I don't know what going to happen.
There's a lot of tension here. At any given
time, something could happen. I could get into a
fight with a Hispanic right now and hundreds of
people gonna get up. I'm not even safe in the
visiting hall with my parents. You gotta suck it
up-- gladiators. On Sunday, there was a riot,
involving twenty-two wards, over something so
small as a Kool-Aid. Yeah, it's dangerous up
here."

(To Actuality 13)

"They don't feel safe. They aren't safe, so they
do the only thing they can to protect themselves,
which is to affiliate with other young people and
typically that's a gang."

Sue Burrell is an attorney with the Youth Law Center. She's
filed several lawsuits on behalf of juvenile offenders,
challenging the conditions of their confinement and one of the
most notorious forms of discipline, called 23 and 1. (To
Actuality 14)
"It means that you are locked in an eight-by-ten
foot cell for 23 hours a day. You're allowed to
come out for one hour a day, during which time
you have to take a shower and have your exercise.
That's it. 23 and 1 just exacerbates any kind of
underlying mental health problems and it causes
mental health problems in people that didn't have
them before. Even for an adult, that kind of
situation is just unbearable. But if you're a
young person and let's say you have underlying
mental illness, it's just going to force you to
deteriorate even further."

(To SFX 8/"We're looking for row 4, grave 3A. It's somewhere
over here, let me keep looking")

This is the cemetery in Sacramento, where Joseph Maldonado
is buried. Joseph was an 18-year old who committed suicide
while at a state juvenile detention center in the town of
Stockton.
(To SFX 9/"Here it is. There's no marker, it's a grave. That's
it, right there....")
The Maldonado family was too poor to provide a gravestone
for Joseph. His sister Renee is trying to raise the money
through donations. (To Actuality 15)

"(Sobs) How I wish he was here. I wish he
didn't have to go through what he did. (sobs) I
wish things could have been different for him.
It's hard to look at these pictures. This is the
last time I seen him on his eighteenth
birthday....(sobs)"

Joseph was in 23 and 1 lockdown for eight weeks. On the day
of his suicide, Joseph was extremely depressed and had covered
up the window to his cell door. The prison staff waited forty
minutes before breaking into his cell. By then, it was too
late. (To Actuality 16)
"Those were signs that obviously he's hiding to
do something. I just feel if he was asking for
help, they should have looked more into it,
'cause he wasn't the first death there. It kind
of makes you raise an eyebrow--like, what's going
on in there? Of course they're going to say what
they have to say to cover themselves. It's these
kids who are committing suicide, asking for help,
or crying out to their loved ones for a reason.
And it's just being ignored."

(To SFX 10/dark music)
What can be done to fix a prison system declared to be
"broken beyond repair?" Many believe prison expansion is the
answer. (To Actuality 17)
"In a moment, I will sign Assembly Bill 900,
authorizing 53,000 new beds and a monumental
shift in how we manage prisons."

In May 2007, Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law AB 900,
a $7.5 billion dollar bill that's been called the largest prison
construction plan in history. But prison rights attorneys say
building more prisons is not the answer. They want the prison
population reduced by 20 percent. While there's a lack of
consensus on what to do, almost everyone agrees--the prison
crisis will be hugely expensive to fix and will not go away any
time soon. Understanding how the crisis started in the first
place may provide some of the answers. When we return--a look
back at the genesis of California's prison crisis.
(One minute music bed)

Part 2
This is "Prisons In Crisis: At State Of Emergency In
California." I'm JoAnn Mar.
The California prison system was not always in crisis. Prior to
1980, California prisons had a progressive reputation. In the
mid 70's, the prison population was down to 20,000, a number
substantially less than the 173,000 prisoners incarcerated
today. Joan Petersilia is professor of criminology at the
University of California at Irvine. (To Actuality 18)
"California actually was the national leader
between the 1940's and 1970's in developing
rehabilitation programs and most of the programs
that are in prisons today actually came from the
California prison system. And so it in fact was
the national model and international model."

Jonathan Simon is professor of law at the University of
California at Berkeley. (To Actuality 19)
"In those years, our prison population was
shrinking actually from its immediate post-war
high. One of the ironies is that at the end of
that period, there arose a consensus that
rehabilitation had not worked. While the system
as a whole didn't seem to show real progress, we
now know that it was working relatively well
compared to what we have now. Then, about a
third of the people went back to prison. Now,
over two-thirds go back to prison."

Caron Vaughn worked for the state juvenile detention system
in 1973--the California Youth Authority. She remembers when
juvenile facilities focused more on therapy. (To Actuality 20)
"It was ran by counselors. They had group
sessions with the kids or they would have single
counseling. They had a therapist, they had
outside activities, they wore their own clothes.
Families could come visit them and bring little
picnic lunches. They'd go to school and the way
the campus was, it was like a college campus.
They'd have the living units, they'd leave and go
to the classrooms. They'd get to go to the gym,
play basketball and that's how it worked."

(To SFX 11/prison door slamming shut)
All that changed, when the federal government declared a war
on crime in the late 60's. By the 1970's, the public's fear of
crime and riots was increasing, spurred on by President Nixon's
anti-crime campaign. (To Actuality 21)
"I think there are lots of individuals and
organizations that benefit from fear of crime.
At the top of the list is local TV news, where
the motto is, if it bleeds, it leads."

Barry Glassner is professor of sociology at the University
of Southern California and author of the book "The Culture of
Fear." (To Actuality 22)
"In most parts of the U.S., it's virtually
impossible to turn on the local TV news without
seeing crime stories that would lead pretty much
anyone to believe that their community is in
danger, that crime is rampant, that it's
frightening, and that's regardless of whether
crime rates are going up or down at the
particular time."

(To SFX 12/TV ambience "Police department, search warrant,
demand entry ....")
State legislatures soon followed the federal government's
lead in getting tough on crime. They enacted laws cracking down
on drugs, created new criminal offenses, and increased
penalties. Thus began the era of "zero tolerance." and
President Ronald Reagan's "War on Drugs" campaign in 1986.
(To SFX 13/Ronald Reagan "Drugs are menacing our society.
They're threatening our values and undercutting our
institutions. They're killing our children." Nancy Reagan "I
was asked by a group of children what to do if they were offered
drugs, and I answered 'Just say no.'") (To Actuality 23)

"Politicians, especially in local elections, very
often run their campaigns on fears of crime
because that is a local issue. It's something
that touches nerves and that motivates people to
go out and vote."

Sociology professor Barry Glassner. (To Actuality 24)

"If I'm going to run for local office, there's
nothing better I can run on than fear of crime,
especially if I can paint my opponent in the race
as being somehow weak or less concerned about
crime. If I can achieve that, I stand a great
chance of motivating large numbers of
constituents to go out and actually cast a vote,
because the stories are frightening. If I'm
really good at it, I'll have a character in my
story, someone who was released from prison or
wasn't arrested who should have been and did
something terrible or he's still on the loose, so
that I give life to that story."

That frightening scenario played itself out in the early
90's in California, when some parolees made headlines by
committing new heinous crimes.
(To SFX 14/Reynolds house tour "I'm going to take you out in the
backyard where three strikes was drafted ....")

Mike Reynolds is known as "the father of three strikes."
His house in the town of Fresno has become a shrine to his
daughter Kimber. In 1992, she was shot while being robbed by
two ex-felons on parole. (To Actuality 25)
"As she lay dying on a deathbed, there was
virtually nothing we could do, a totally helpless
feeling. I made a promise to her that if I
couldn't save her life, I would do what I could
to try to prevent this from happening to any
other child and that was my promise to her and
I've tried to live to that."

California's version of the three strikes law is one of the
harshest in the country. Anyone convicted of two serious
felonies can be sent to prison for the rest of his life if he
commits a third felony of any kind, like stealing video tapes or
golf clubs. At first, the three strikes campaign went nowhere--
until the kidnapping/murder of twelve-year old Polly Klaas.
According to law professor Jonathan Simon, fears generated by
the Polly Klaas murder led to the public's embrace of three
strikes. (To Actuality 26)
"The fact that the crime took place in what at
least appeared to Americans to be a
quintessentially a safe suburb distanced from the
inner city and all of its turmoil and problems.
And that it involved a young girl taken right out
of her house, I think went right to the gut of
where crime fear in America has lurked. And if
Polly Klaas could be kidnapped out of her
suburban home, then nobody in California was
safe."

(To SFX 15/Sound of phones ringing for a few seconds, then to
Actuality 27)

"Lo and behold, they discovered the missing body
of Polly Klaas and it was on a Saturday night.
Our lines here in Fresno lit up."

Mike Reynolds, co-author of the Three Strikes law, says the
phones rang off the hook at campaign headquarters. (To
Actuality 28)

"All of a sudden, we couldn't write down the
requests for petitions as fast as they were
coming in. I mean our lines were just blowing, I
mean what's going on? We didn't know what
happened. There was a lot of public outrage.
Well suddenly, we had the fastest qualifying
initiative in the history of California."

Politicians on both sides of the aisle quickly jumped on the
three-strike bandwagon. One of them was Pat Nolan, Republican
leader of the State Assembly. (To Actuality 29)
"There was a headlong rush to pass three-strikes.
I knew that it was flawed at the time. Several
of us tried to change it. But the juggernaut in
the Legislature was 'we've got to pass this
because there's just public demand for it.' I
was dedicated to making our neighborhoods safer.
I thought that would be done by catching the bad
guys and locking them up for long periods of
time. We fought and got a tremendous expansion
of the California prisons."

(To SFX 16/music)

Tough on crime became the new slogan of the 90's.
Legislators were competing with each other to see who could be
tougher. Any politician seen as being soft on crime ran the
risk of losing his seat. Law professor Jonathan Simon says
countless changes were made to the California penal code, all
leading to longer sentences. (To Actuality 30)
"A study done by some of our colleagues at the
Stanford Center for Criminal Justice, in the late
80's into the early 90's found that in five
years, over a thousand sentencing laws were
enacted, all of them increasing sentencing.
That's about one law a day that the Legislature
was in session. The sentencing code is sort of a
gift to Legislators, because it's something they
can easily enact, that resonates with many
members of the public and which has very little
resistance.."

(To SFX 17/"I'm Fresno mayor Alan Autry. When jail and prison
inmates are released before their time, it emboldens dangerous
criminals to commit new and more violent offenses. How often do
we read about tragic crime, only to find out it was committed by
somebody fresh out of jail or prison?")

With new crimes on the books, harsher penalties, and longer
sentences, California's prison population grew rapidly and by
2007, the prison population had reached an all time high of
173,000, a nearly 700 percent increase since the 1970's. The
number of state prisons has grown from twelve in 1980 to 33
today. But new construction did not keep pace with the
explosive growth in the prison population.
(To SFX 18/sound of prison door slamming shut)
As California got tough on crime, the purpose of prisons
shifted to punishment and control. Criminologist Joan
Petersilia says California lost all enthusiasm for
rehabilitation. (To Actuality 31)
"Pretty much all the rehabilitation programs in
the California prison system were dismantled.
That means education classes were discontinued,
work training programs were discontinued. Fully
half of all prisoners that come home today will
have sat idle their entire prison stay. So, we
basically dismantled most every rehabilitation
program we had and it became a very punishment-
oriented model."

(To SFX 19/sounds of corrections officers graduation ceremony
for a few seconds)

It's graduation day at the state correctional training
center in the central valley town of Galt. These new
corrections officers will soon be sent to prisons around the
state. Their jobs will not be easy. Former corrections officer
Herb Higgins remembers the challenges. He was forced to retire
in 1990 for stress-related heart problems. (To Actuality 32)
"Your adrenalin is just rarin' and roaring all
the time, because you don't know what's facing
you on the other side of the door. I searched
cells where people have brought buck knives in
from the streets. They've made prison shanks. I
searched one cell one day where an inmate had
seventeen knives underneath his toilet. Each
institution is controlled by a particular gang.
There's always a power struggle amongst the
inmates to control a particular prison."

(To Actuality 33)
"The staff, the correctional officers view
themselves as something of a police force there
to keep the lid on, which is a pretty conflict-
oriented approach."

Law professor Jonathan Simon. (To Actuality 34)

"Once we declared that the purpose of prison was
punishment, we took away the kind of script for
what ought to go on in prisons and what has gone
on instead is at best a warehouse where people
are just doing time without doing any real
activity to productively fill their lives. But
much worse, we know we have this gang problem in
prison and largely it has grown up to fill the
vacuum of the absence of any really positive
programming."

(To SFX 20/excerpt from CCPOA video "Hard Time", then to
Actuality 35)

"To explain how it is to be in prison, it's like
you're an amputee. You're cut off from your
family, you're cut off from your work, from your
home and your community and your church. Then
you're tossed with your stump still bleeding,
tossed into this roiling cauldron of anger,
bitterness, and resentment, sometimes violence."

At the pinnacle of his career as a law-and-order politician,
Republican leader Pat Nolan saw his own life fall apart when he
went to federal prison on corruption charges in the mid 90's.
(To Actuality 36)
"It really is horrible. You're treated as
meaningless. In my case, screamed at constantly
by a counselor, berated, sought things to try to
single me out. It was destabilizing to my self-
esteem. So many of the men and women going in
don't have good self-images to start with.
They're told thousands of times 'you've got
nothing coming' and get snarled at 'you got
nothing coming.' And implied in that is 'you are
nothing, you come from nothing, you will be
nothing, you're worthless.'"

With low self-esteem, lack of job skills and education, and
a felony record, most ex-offenders have difficulties finding
housing, landing a job, leading stable lives, and staying out of
prison. Many return to prison on minor parole violations. (To
Actuality 37)
"To me, the parole system is the biggest culprit
in prison crowding."

Criminologist Joan Petersilia says California is one of the
few states in the country that requires parole for every
prisoner, regardless of the severity of the crime. (To
Actuality 38)
"We play catch and release. Inmates are released
from prison. Two-thirds will be returned to
prison within three years, most of them for
parole violations such as they've missed an
appointment with their parole officer or they've
tested dirty, which is the primary reason or
they've absconded supervision. They'll get a
revocation term and that revocation term averages
four months. So they'll go in for four months,
they'll be out for about five months, they'll go
back in for four months, and they just keep doing
that until they have accumulated 36 months and
then they'll be discharged."

(To SFX 21/prison ambience)
Eventually, over 93 percent of all prisoners will be
released and many ex-offenders are likely to commit new crimes.
(To Actuality 39)
"We've invested so much in a system that actually
turns people out of prison that are more
dangerous to us and that puts us all at risk."

Former Republican legislator and ex-felon Pat Nolan. (To
Actuality 40)

"They ride on the buses with us, they go shopping
with us, they're at the parks with us. How
they're treated inside prison, how they're
prepared to live will determine what kind of
neighbors they'll be. If they're treated like
animals inside, they're stripped of any dignity,
if they're not prepared to lead a productive
profession or business life, have some skill when
they get out, the tendency is to slip back into
the ways of crime, of the street. And that puts
all of us at risk, that puts us all in danger."

(To SFX 22/music)
California has one of the highest recidivism rates in the
country. Over 70 percent of all prisoners released return to
prison in three years. The huge amounts of money spent on
corrections has failed to reduce recidivism. Annual state
spending on corrections is nearing ten billion dollars. It
costs $43,000 to house each prisoner every year, almost twice
the national average. Bay Area legislator Mark Leno was former
chair of the State Assembly Public Safety committee. (To
Actuality 41)
"We were at 5.4 percent spending on corrections
in 2003. Today, four years later, we're pushing
ten percent of our general fund on corrections.
And it is now projected that within a couple of
years, California will be spending more on the
Department of Corrections than on higher
education, probably the first in any
industrialized western nation."

(To Actuality 42)

"At present, the state wastes literally billions
of dollars in its California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation, and much of that
proportionally in medical care."

Federal receiver Robert Sillen, who took control of the
state's prison medical care system in 2006, after federal court
intervention. According to a 2006 state controller's audit of
the prison health care system, waste, abuse, and management
deficiencies are rampant. The report cited several examples of
over billing and poor services by outside private contractors.
Sillen says part of the problem is the lack of systems in place
to track spending and medical information. (To Actuality 43)
"We're running a medical care system that has no
information technology. It's just unheard of.
Here we are right now?we're sitting in the middle
of Silicon Valley and there are no computers out
there whereby clinicians can get medical
information. The medical records, you know,
sometimes they're just jackets with 52,000 inches
of unfiled clinical material. So it is just a
system of utter chaos, totally out of control.
And we have to bring a modicum or organization
and consistency to it?we're years away from
that."

(To Actuality 44)

"Right now, nobody's held accountable for budget
issues. The Peter principle is alive and well in
this agency."

Chuck Alexander is vice president of CCPOA--the California
Correctional and Peace Officers Association. He's spent a lot
of time in the state capitol, lobbying on behalf of the union
and its members and doing battle with the Department of
Corrections. (To Actuality 45)
"If the budget is bad, if we're out of whack in
the budget for example in this department, if
we're off by a hundred million dollars--it's
considered a 'rounding' error by this department.
And the person or persons that make that rounding
error don't have to answer for that. They may
even get promoted for that."

And for those who blow the whistle on fraud and waste, life
can be difficult. (To Actuality 46)
"I'd go into work sometimes for three or four
days and no one would speak to me. It was an odd
feeling. But I didn't want to stay home on
stress leave or any of that stuff."

In 1998, Richard Krupp was Chief of the Personnel Automation
section at the Department of Corrections and he discovered
spiraling sick leave and overtime cost overruns of nearly 100
million dollars. He brought this problem to the attention of
his supervisors. Instead of expressing gratitude-- (To
Actuality 47)
"They didn't like that. They said, 'well, what
can you do to make the rates look like they're
decreasing?' I said 'I'm not doing that.' And
they said 'you refusing?' And I said 'yeah, I'm
not gonna do that because it makes no sense.
You're going to try to convince the state auditor
and the report was going to the Legislature. If
you're going to convince them you don't have a
problem, how do you fix it then?' So they took
away my keys to the office and told me they
didn't need my help anymore and I think they
assigned that task to somebody else."

Richard Krupp was removed from his job and was put to work
in the research department. There he was assigned one hour of
work a week for a salary of $72,000 a year. Krupp eventually
filed a whistle blower complaint with the State Personnel Board
and the State Inspector General's office. (To Actuality 48)
"I didn't actually think of myself as a
whistleblower. I was just trying to get back on
track and be a normal person. They found that
the Department retaliated against me when they
moved me and wouldn't allow me to go back to my
other job--just about everything I had listed in
the complaint. They recommended that two of the
people in the Department, I forget the exact
punishment--they were supposed to be thirty days
without pay and they were supposed to have some
sort of adverse action--I don't remember the
details."

But nothing happened--no one was punished for the
retaliation against Richard Krupp and the Department of
Corrections continued to fight his complaint for several years,
using twenty-two attorneys. The matter eventually settled and
Krupp was awarded $500,000 dollars. And by that time, the state
had spent nearly one million dollars in attorneys' fees.
(To SFX 23/music)
Richard Krupp was not alone in raising questions. In 2008,
a national report criticized California's spending priorities.
The Pew Center on the States concluded "there hasn't been a
clear and convincing return for public safety. Expanding
prisons will accomplish less and cost more than it has in the
past."
When we come back--getting smart on crime. A look at
alternative ways to fix California's prison crisis.
(One minute music bed)

Part 3
This is "Prisons In Crisis: A State Of Emergency In
California." I'm JoAnn Mar.
There are no simple solutions to the California prison
crisis. After 25 years of continuous neglect and mismanagement,
fixing the crisis will take a long time and a lot of money. But
some incremental progress is being made on getting runaway
correctional spending under control. Department of Corrections
official Richard Krupp, who blew the whistle on wasteful
spending and was banished to a do-nothing job, is more
optimistic these days. (To Actuality 49)
"Well, I know if I elevate issues or problems
that we have, people pay attention. They may not
always agree, I'm not always be right about this
stuff, but at least they pay attention and they
do something, which is not the way it was in the
past."

In 2007, the Schwarzenegger administration promoted Richard
Krupp to head the department's audits and compliance section.
He now manages the effort to root out waste, fraud, and abuse.
(To Actuality 50)
"Contractors get the message that they need to
clean up their act, cause we're out there looking
at them. While we're at the audit, we find
things we need to fix right away. Instead of
waiting till the end, we take it up to
management, they take some action, and it's
done."

(To Actuality 51)

"Step by step, we'll get there, but the end is
nowhere in sight."

Federal receiver Robert Sillen recently described his uphill
battle trying to reform the state's prison medical care system.
(To Actuality 52)

"There is no way to get this job done without
being, let's say, forceful in one's approach,
because nobody's rolling over and playing dead
and that means everybody. There's so many vested
interests that it's incredible. Every inch of
the way is a fight, because if one isn't up to
this and one can't stick it out, then why get
into it in the first place?"

But Sillen's abrasive style did not sit well with
politicians and prison activists alike. After two contentious
years on the job, he was removed by Judge Henderson. During his
short tenure, Sillen accomplished a lot--he fought through
bureaucratic red tape, recruited hundreds of nurses, raised
staff salaries, and improved the pharmacy system.
(To SFX 24/sound of San Quentin gate)
San Quentin was the site for Sillen's pilot project. (segue
to SFX 25/sounds of screening area) Medical care has improved
significantly. Upon arrival, all prisoners now receive medical,
dental, and mental health screenings in new exam rooms. Medical
records can now be accessed more quickly.
(To SFX 26/sounds of drilling and construction)
Plans are underway for a new central health care facility at
San Quentin. The five-story building will be a state-of-the-art
hospital that will house fifty medical and dental beds, out-
patient clinics, medical records and a pharmacy.
(To SFX 27/San Quentin ambience "last call for duckets ....")
In the meantime, makeshift clinics have been built in the
gymnasium and in portable offices. One of Sillen's major
accomplishments was the construction of a new emergency room.
Registered nurse Elsa Monroe says for a long time, San Quentin's
ER consisted of only two beds in a tiny 400 square foot space
with no medical equipment or supplies. (To Actuality 53)
"As you see, we have space so we can stretch out
our arms and not touch the walls. They have
curtains, privacy, which is something you don't
see around the facility. So we don't turn away
the people who are coming in with acute injuries-
-hangings to stabbings to burns, fights in the
courtyard."

Robert Sillen calls the progress he made "baby steps"--just
a start in the long process of bringing all 33 state prisons up
to constitutional standards. But until overcrowding and
substandard conditions are addressed, progress in prison medical
care will be slow.
(To SFX 27/music "Amazing Grace")
"Amazing Grace" is the hymn that gave disgraced Republican
legislator Pat Nolan comfort while he was in prison--a song that
reinforces the idea there is hope and redemption for sinners.
When he got out, Nolan devoted his life to prison reform. He
joined Prison Fellowship Ministries, a faith-based organization
founded by Watergate felon Charles Colson. Nolan now spends his
time traveling the country, promoting rehabilitation and reentry
programs as a way of reducing recidivism and overcrowding. (To
Actuality 54)
"People do listen to me. Now we're not always
successful. But the fact that I did serve time
in prison and can talk about what I saw there and
the pain and separation, but also the abuse and I
can talk about the legislative process and can
explain to them how our current system isn't
really meeting the needs of the public--it gives
me a unique position to speak out and try to
improve things."

Through his work with Prison Fellowship Ministries, Pat
Nolan has helped establish successful reentry and diversion
programs for ex-offenders in seven states. The efforts of Nolan
and other prison reformers are starting to pay off in California
as well. There's now a broad consensus that rehabilitation
holds the key to reducing recidivism and overcrowding. But
rehabilitation is a long-term solution?prisoners do not turn
into model citizens overnight and rehabilitation programs have
lagged. Before rehabilitation can start, overcrowded conditions
must first be reduced. The day rooms and gymnasiums are
overflowing with prisoners and bunk beds, leaving no space for
classes and counseling.
(To SFX 28/CIM gym ambience)
After years of litigation, the Prison Law Office of northern
California is tired of waiting. It's seeking a court order to
roll back the number of prisoners currently incarcerated. A
three-judge federal panel has taken up the Prison Law Office
request for a population cap. (To Actuality 55)
"There's people out there trying to weaken the
three strikes once again. So Let me just say one
more time loudly and clearly so everyone knows.
That is never going to happen. The three strikes
law will never be softened--not on my watch!"

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger addressed a Victims' Rights
march in 2007. Law enforcement and Republican leaders have
flatly rejected sentencing reform and the early release of any
prisoners. (To Actuality 56)
"No one will get out of prisons because we are
running out of space. They will only get out of
prisons because they have served their term, they
have served their time and they're able to get
out of prison."

To resolve the overcrowding crisis, federal judges and
mediators are trying to bring all sides together. Settlement
discussions have focused on parole reform to reduce the numbers
of parole violators returning to prison. California Assemblyman
Mark Leno says parole reform is needed to prevent ex-offenders
from constantly cycling in and out of prison. (To Actuality 57)
"We don't have what most states have, which is
called intermediate sanctions. That means, if
you're on parole and you, let's say, test
positive for drugs. Well, in most states,
there's an intermediate sanction that, rather
than sending you all the way back to prison and
in this state costing you and me the taxpayer
$43,000 annually to house that inmate sent back,
you'd send that individual into drug rehab, which
is clearly the problem--this was not for the
commission of a new crime. We don't have that."

Also under discussion is reducing the time prisoners spend
behind bars. One solution is good time credits--reducing their
sentences in exchange for their participation in rehabilitation
programs. Dan MacAllair is executive director of the Center for
Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a non-profit that promotes prison
reform. MacAllair supports the idea of good time credits for
prisoners, but he doubts whether it can succeed under the
present circumstances. (To Actuality 58)
"Well, what happens if they're willing to
participate in work programs but work programs
aren't available, which is a major problem in the
corrections system in California, even for
inmates that are motivated to try to improve
themselves. The avenues for them to do that are
closed."

Whether it's early release of prisoners, parole reform or
good time, any permanent reduction of the prison population
depends on the success of rehabilitation. But comprehensive
counseling, treatment, and training programs do not exist within
California's prisons or outside in the community. The state
virtually dismantled its rehabilitation programs twenty years
ago and is now facing the daunting task of starting over.
(To SFX 29/Music)
California took its first step toward restoring
rehabilitation in 2007 with the passage of the AB 900 prison
construction bill. AB 900 requires that all prisons reach
rehabilitation benchmarks before new construction can take
place--not an easy goal, given the lack of available space for
programs and classes. But the AB 900 legislation does provide
for ten reentry centers to be built around the state. Prisoners
serving the last year of their sentence will be transferred to
the reentry facility closest to their communities. The idea
behind reentry is to help ease prisoners' transition back into
society through a combination of education, job training, and
community support services. (To Actuality 59)
"It's not a bad idea. It actually has a lot
going for it."

Joan Petersilia was appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger to
head up his Rehabilitation Strike Team. Her job is to implement
the rehabilitation mandates specified in AB 900. (To Actuality
60)
"The challenge is where you're going to site
them. Communities, I think, are skeptical that
they want these facilities in their backyard.
It's very difficult to site jails, to site group
homes for prisoners, for parolees, etc. I think
the real challenge is whether you're going to get
local communities to build facilities and accept
these prisoners."

(To Actuality 61)
"In my opinion, the Department of Corrections,
which is vested in running prisons, has done a
poor job of running community programs with some
exceptions. But overall, they're not heavily
invested in the development of non-prison
programs and non-prison alternatives."

Prison reform activist Dan MacAllair says that the
Department of Corrections has a poor track record managing
reentry programs. (To Actuality 62)
"You have to have competent oversight. You have
to have the capacity and the willingness of the
corrections agency to make it happen. If you
have an agency that's hostile to community based
programs, then it's going to fail."

Only one percent of AB 900 funding is directed to
rehabilitation--an amount reform activists say is too small to
do much good.
(To SFX 30/sounds of corrections officers graduation ceremony)
In addition, successful programs depend on a supportive
environment. Current training of corrections officers is based
on the military model. The emphasis is on punishment and
control, not on treatment. Joan Petersilia says the success of
rehabilitation will depend on the training and commitment of
staff. (To Actuality 63)
"I have found guards who are incredibly resistant
and they will say 'they ain't got nothing coming'
and 'I'm here to guard them and don't want any
interaction' and 'as long as they're behind a
cage and locked up 24 hours a day, it's fine with
me.' But I also found equal numbers of
corrections officers who are ready and chomping
at the bit to do something different, telling me
they got into this work not to lock people up.
They got into this work to make a difference."

What would a successful reentry program look like? Many
models exist at the local level in California and in other
states. Sometimes coming up with a successful program requires
thinking outside of the box.
(To SFX 31/sounds of purse strap being adjusted and snap closing
"It's covered in felt. It holds pens or lipstick ....")

Arizona Department of Corrections director Dora Schriro is
showing off a handbag made entirely of license plates--her
innovative idea for raising money to fund job training programs.
(To SFX 32/Shriro "We like to say that our handbags are so well
made, that they're guaranteed twenty to life")

Another one of Schriro's innovations was a successful
reentry program she started in 1993 when she headed up
Missouri's Department of Corrections. She calls it the
"parallel universe"--reinventing prison to resemble the real
world. (To Actuality 64)
"We have traditionally treated the population
very much like children. If it's our
responsibility as the corrections staff to wake
up the population and get them to breakfast on
time, why are we so surprised when that
population fails to report to their parole
officer? So saying to the population--you know,
most of you know how to tell time. It's now your
responsibility to figure out when you need to
wake yourselves up and get to the chow hall on
time. And if you miss a meal, it's because you
didn't organize your time correctly."

The goal is to prepare prisoners to live in the community.
Prisoners are required to make decisions and engage in
productive activities around the clock--work, classes, job
training, treatment programs, and community service. (To
Actuality 65)
"We are tough, but we are tough and smart about
the way we achieve safety now and safety later.
Anyone who would argue for inmates who lay around
in their bunks all day and watch TV as opposed to
getting their buns out of bed from the first to
last day--maybe needs to rethink what tough and
smart is all about."

(To Actuality 66)

"We have decided in San Francisco that we want to
be smart on crime."

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris. (To
Actuality 67)

"And we recognize that one of the smartest ways
to deal with crime is to do everything we can,
not just to react after it happens, but to
prevent it from happening in the first place."

San Francisco is a city that has some of the most innovative
locally funded programs for criminal offenders in California.
(To SFX 33/Back on Track ambience "So stop smoking week! Stop
using escstsy! You have to stop smoking week if you want a good
job ....")

Back on Track is a program started by Harris in 2005 for
first time drug offenders. Counselors work one-on-one with them
and make available a wide array of support services and
opportunities.
(To SFX 34/sounds of Back on Track graduation ceremony "So the
first graduate we will celebrate this evening is Robert Butler
....")

Upon completion of the program, Back on Track graduates get
their criminal charges dropped and they don't go to prison.
Back on Track participant Ann Held spoke the graduation
ceremony. (To Actuality 68)
"I thought it was gonna be easy. Regardless of
what anybody say how easy the program is--they
lyin'! They didn't do it right, because it was
hard. I had temptations every day. I had people
after being on Back on Track offering me dope to
sell, rather than ten dollars to eat or a place
to lay my head. So I went and enrolled in
school. I attend Heald College full time, I'm
volunteering in community work. Now I could open
my group home and I won't have no felonies to
stop me."

(To SFX 35/sounds of NoVA meeting "Did I know fightin' was
wrong? No I didn't, it wasn't wrong ....")

These ex-felons are part of another San Francisco reentry
programs called NoVA--the No Violence Alliance, run by the
sheriff's department.
(To SFX 36/more sounds of NoVA meeting "When I did 18 years for
brutalizing somebody with my hands, did I think I was gonna get
18 years for brutalizing somebody?")

NoVA is a unique reentry program that specifically targets
services to ex-felons with violence in their past--people at
high risk for returning to a life of crime. San Francisco
Sheriff Michael Hennessey started NoVA in 2006. (To Actuality
69)
"Of the 330 people we've accepted, only 42 have
been re-arrested, which is about a twelve percent
re-arrest rate. Compare that to state parole of
70 percent, I would say these programs work."

(To SFX 37/Sound of counselor lecturing group)
One of the keys to NoVA's success is its staff of case
managers, many of whom are ex-offenders. They serve as
counselors, mentors, and role models. The case managers help
NoVA participants find housing, jobs, treatment programs and
help them manage their lives. Alan, who spent three years at
San Quentin, is now an ex-felon in the NoVA program. (To
Actuality 70)
"They showed they cared about me. They showed
that I could do it. I just gotta keep trying. I
can't give up. They instilled some self-worth in
myself. I was ready to die. And they sat me
down and talked to me for hours--just about life.
I do plan to get back in school. I want to
myself see that come to light. Right now, it's
dark, but it's going to come to light, 'cause my
heart's in the right place."

(To SFX 38/Sacramento rally gospel music "Don't you give in/To
Satan and sin/keep holding on until your journey's end")

For states with large prison populations, California serves
as a cautionary tale of what can go wrong with unrestrained
prison expansion. California is starting to turn the corner,
but it still has a long way to go before the prison crisis comes
to an end. The weak economy and the billions of dollars going
into prisons are adding to California's growing budget deficit.
The state is under pressure are to turn the prisons around as
quickly as possible. But how quickly the crisis can be resolved
will depend on whether the public demands change. Professor of
criminology Joan Petersilia says so far, the public has been
indifferent. (To Actuality 71)
"The only way to get the public to engage and be
interested in correctional reform is when they
start understanding the economics. That only
when people realize that as you're building
prisons and the budget is ten billion dollars and
all that budget comes from things like education-
-we are not funding schools in California, we're
not funding roads, we're not funding health care.
And until the California public realizes that
these dollars that they are not paying attention
to that is going to the prison system is carrying
from things they do care about--I don't think
they'll be engaged in this policy area at all.
And that is really our challenge."

(To SFX 39/closing music and credits)
"Prisons In Crisis--A State Of Emergency In California" was
written, produced, and narrated by JoAnn Mar. The program
editor was Alyne Ellis. This program was supported by the Soros
Justice Fellowship of the Open Society Institute. Special
thanks to KALW in San Francisco for use of studio space and in-
kind support. This program is available free at our website
www.californiaprisoncrisis.org. All questions and comments are
welcome. Our website again is www.californiaprisoncrisis.org.

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