Prop 36 is a Prison Spending Scam - Knock LA

Proposition 36, on the ballot this November for California voters, resurrects the same failed approaches of punishment, prison, jail, and mandatory minimums that put California on the path to mass incarceration decades ago.

On May 23, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in a lawsuit against California involving prison overcrowding. Specifically, the court upheld the ruling of a federal three–judge panel requiring the state to reduce overcrowding in its prisons to 137.5 percent of its “design capacity” within two years. At the time of the Supreme Court intervention, the state prison system was operating at roughly 180 percent of design capacity, or about 34,000 persons more than the limit established by the three–judge panel.

Let us say that again; California prisons were overpopulated by 180 PERCENT, and as a result, The court found that “the California prison medical care system is broken beyond repair,” resulting in an “unconscionable degree of suffering and death.”

As part of the effort to comply with the SCOTUS order, Prop 47, passed in 2014 by California voters, classified certain crimes as misdemeanors, changed resentencing laws, and created the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Fund to support rehabilitation programs and fund drug and mental health treatment. Since implementation, Prop 47 has saved taxpayers over $816 million through reduced incarceration costs.

Now, proponents of Prop 36 want California voters to forget all of this and roll back the progress made toward decarceration under the guise of "increased crime," which is a right-wing myth debunked by actual data provided by the FBI.

Prop 36 would:

• CUT dedicated funding for drug treatment
• CUT dedicated funding for recidivism reduction
• CUT dedicated funding for school-based prevention
• Disproportionately harm low income communities of color
• Waste $26 BILLION on prison over-spending
• Spend $10 BILLION more on jails
• spend $13 BILLION more on court costs
• Take $850 MILLION away from the state’s most successful drug treatment and homeless prevention programs
• Take $300 MILLION away from services for survivors of crime
• Enact new mandatory minimum sentencing
• Enact new mandatory sentences for people who are caught while unknowingly possessing any amount of fentanyl
• Require police to book people in jail regardless of whether they pose a risk to public safety
• And despite claiming to provide treatment it will actually CUT dedicated funding for treatment and victims services

You get the idea.

An editorial recently featured in Knock LA, "Prop 36 is a prison spending scam that will ruin countless lives. We have to stop it," calls Prop 36 what it is; a spending scam. The editorial is written by Shervin Aazami, policy manager for Initiate Justice Action.

Excerpts are featured below.

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Proposition 36, a California state ballot initiative appearing on the November ballot, is a criminalization measure backed by the prison and police lobby and financed by giant corporations like Walmart and Home Depot.

The initiative is the latest attempt by “tough on crime” groups and their corporate allies to return to the policies and mindset of the War On Drugs era and to fatten the budgets of state prisons and county jails. The campaign for Prop 36 builds upon years of carefully cultivated backlash to a decade of modest but significant criminal justice reforms. Perhaps the most prominent and sinister effort is the now-retracted false claim from the National Retail Federation about the scope of “organized retail crime,” which unleashed a flood of credulous news coverage.

California’s reforms, though far from sufficient, made our communities safer and saved hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars by reducing prison sentences and expanding treatment-focused approaches to substance use disorders. If passed, Prop 36 would roll back much of this progress. It would bring back felony charges for simple drug possession, create new mandatory sentence enhancements for petty theft, expand the Three Strikes Law, and claw back millions in funds from treatment programs and other community services to fund the expansion of jails and prisons.

And then there are the exorbitant costs associated with jails, prisons, and the court system. Today in California, it costs nearly $133,000 per year per person in state prison. In fact, annual incarceration costs per person have increased 91% over the last decade — largely because of how lengthy sentences are making the prison population much older, which comes with higher healthcare and related costs. There is considerable evidence that lengthy sentences do not deter future crime, and can actually have the opposite effect. A mere 24 hours in jail has an immensely destabilizing effect on a person’s life and dramatically increases their likelihood of re-arrest, not to mention the negative impact on the person’s employment, child custody, and housing, all factors that increase the chances that someone may commit a crime in the future. California’s three-year recidivism rate is already over 40% — measures like Prop 36 are only going to make these figures worse. Wasting billions in public funds to expand the footprint of our prison system is not only morally bankrupt, it is actively counterproductive. 

Simply put, our communities cannot afford this prison spending scam. We deserve real and compassionate solutions to homelessness, substance use, and mental health. Prop 36 seeks to capitalize on people’s fears to unravel important reforms that have made California safer and provided cost savings to fund prevention and treatment programs. Prop 36 will worsen the racial and economic inequities that plague countless Black and brown Californians and decimate our already precarious state budget. 

The choice on Prop 36 should be simple — a resounding NO.

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You can read the full editorial, "Prop 36 is a prison spending scam that will ruin countless lives. We have to stop it," on the Knock LA website. Knock LA is a journalism and commentary project by Ground Game LA, dedicated to giving a voice to the left and uplifting marginalized communities.