To be tough on crime, you must be smart on crime

In 1977, California revised the Penal Code with an opening sentence that stated: “The Legislature finds and declares that the purpose of imprisonment for crime is punishment.” At that time there were 12 prisons with 23,000 inmates.

Over the next three decades, 23 new prisons were built with a design capacity for 78,000 inmates. As the campaign slogan “tough on crime” dominated the flyers, our criminal justice system squeezed 173,000 inmates into these new prisons. In these overcrowded prisons, inmates suffered conditions that sank far below the level of human dignity. A mentally ill inmate languished on a 700-person waitlist for medical treatment before being released without treatment. The lack of any meaningful attempt to rehabilitate offenders before releasing them created a public safety crisis.

In the last 30 years, Butte County sent nearly 10,000 people to prison. These people returned to the community with minimal, if any, social or financial support, housing or jobs. The average age of a person committing crimes in Butte County is 34 years. And chances are, the person has spent time in prison and was released before reoffending.

We were incarcerating people at a rate exceeding any country in the world. Yet putting people in prison alone fails to meaningfully deter crime because overcrowding requires prisons to release about the same number of inmates as are newly incarcerated. In Butte County, we sent 550 people to state prison in 2008. That same year, 550 inmates were released to the streets. Recidivism was 60%.

In 2010, the Supreme Court declared that California was violating the Constitution, in a 51page opinion that included pictures of prison conditions and a quote from the former warden of San Quentin prison who said: “I absolutely believe that we make people worse, and that we are not meeting public safety by the way we treat people.” And in 2017, the Legislature declared that “the purpose of sentencing is public safety achieved through punishment, rehabilitation and restorative justice,” and changed the Penal Code. To help implement some changes, including uniformity of sentencing, the Board of

State and Community Corrections recently provided a grant of $287,000 to the Butte County

Public Defenders. The funds are dedicated to Project Upstream, a new project staffed with two half time attorneys, a criminogenic evaluator, a clinical evaluator, and a CSUC professor for data collection.

The key mission of Project Upstream is to prepare youthful offenders to come out of prison better than when they entered. We work with youthful offenders to help them develop a case plan to use the time while incarcerated to prepare for who they want to be when the return home. We work with the prisons to get the youthful offenders into sensitive need yards to avoid the detrimental influence of old-time inmates. We help them set education goals and strengthen family ties.

I went to court recently for a 64-year-old prisoner. The Secretary of the prison system recommended that his sentence be reduced by five years. After evaluating his criminogenic factors, his conduct in prison, and his plans for reentry, we concluded that he was not a danger to the public and was unlikely to reoffend. The judge agreed and struck five years off of his sentence. This decision saved taxpayers $415,000 (it costs $83,000 a year to house a person in state prison). The savings on this one case exceeds the amount of the grant. Over the next six months, 88 inmates will be eligible to have their sentence reduced by one year because they pose low risk to public safety. The savings will be over $7 million dollars.

Based on careful evaluation, the number of people from Butte County in state prisons can be reduced from 1,000 to 800, with minimal risk to public safety. The $16M dollars in taxpayer savings could then pay, train, and equip 100 new Butte County police officers.

Dangerous people need to be locked up and retribution toward law violators is proper, but rehabilitation and prevention give the best value for the money. To be tough on crime you must be smart on crime.