Schwarzenegger plan to release prison inmates early to save money divides California lawmakers

Calif. lawmakers split over early inmate release

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to trim California’s prison population by nearly 30,000 inmates in a cost-saving move gets its first hearing before the state Legislature on Thursday, as it faces mounting opposition from Republican lawmakers and law enforcement groups.

The debate is a holdover from state budget negotiations earlier this summer. At the time they closed a massive deficit, lawmakers agreed to cut $1.2 billion from the prison system without saying how to do it.

Schwarzenegger’s plan has long-range implications for how criminals are sentenced in California, drawing criticism from Republicans who say it will lead to more dangerous felons on the street.

“If you look at the current system, we return 70 percent of all parolees back to prison,” Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento, said Thursday before the legislative debate began. “This is an opportunity to do better and to begin to change the embarrassing fact that we spend more money on prisons than we do the University of California system.”

Steinberg believes there will be enough Democratic support in the 40-member Senate to pass the bill on a simple majority vote. The 80-member Assembly also plans to take up the bill Thursday.

If approved by both houses, the governor’s proposal would release or divert from state prisons 27,000 inmates in the current fiscal year and another 10,000 in the fiscal year that begins next July.

It would do so through a range of measures:

— Inmates with less than 12 months to serve, who are over age 60 or who are medically incapacitated could be released from prison and given home detention with electronic monitoring.

— Sentences for certain property crimes will be lowered to misdemeanors, meaning convicts won’t have to spend time in prison. Those include vehicle theft, petty theft with a prior conviction, receiving stolen property and check-kiting, a scam that primarily targets banks with fraudulent deposits.

— Allow more inmates to gain early release by completing educational, vocational or substance abuse rehabilitation programs.

— Ease supervision for thousands of parolees, making it more difficult to send them back to prison for violations.

“These are going to have very long-lasting, negative effects on our communities,” said Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully, a past-president of the California District Attorneys Association, which voted Wednesday to oppose Schwarzenegger’s plan.

Sam Blakeslee, the Republican leader of the state Assembly, called the legislation a step backward.

“This bill will result in the largest jailbreak in California history,” he said in a statement.

All the changes are contained in one bill, raising concerns that the legislation contains too many controversial parts to gain majority support in either house.

In the Assembly, for example, three Democratic lawmakers are planning to run for state attorney general next year and are reluctant to vote for any bill that will reduce criminal sentences out of fear that they will appear soft on crime.

Adding to the uncertainty is a provision announced Wednesday that establishes a commission to review California’s sentencing guidelines. Its primary mission will be to determine whether some sentences could be lessened as a way to take pressure off an overcrowded prison system.

The new guidelines would be due by July 2012.

Any recommendations the commission makes would further alter California’s criminal justice landscape. The changes would take effect automatically unless they were rejected by the governor and a majority vote in the Legislature.

Details about the commission were made public Wednesday. The last-minute timing alone was a deal-killer for the California Police Chiefs Association, which had been prepared to support other portions of the package, said Pasadena Police Chief Bernard Melekian, the group’s president.

“We think it’s an abrogation of legislative authority, the idea that this commission would operate independently of the Legislature,” he said.

He added that the association also could not accept the makeup of the proposed panel because it would include an ex-felon as a nonvoting member.

Sen. Gloria Romero said California should join the federal government and 22 other states that have created such commissions.

“There is a need to bring a smartness. Toughness alone will not bring us out of this prison crisis,” said Romero, a Democrat from Los Angeles who has pushed for a sentencing commission for years. “We either do it or the judges will not only do it for us, they’ll do it to us.”

The Legislature will not be abdicating its responsibility because it will have the final say and can enact changes in separate legislation, Romero said. She equated it to federal commissions that recommend politically sensitive military base closures but leave it to Congress to accept or reject their decisions.

Schwarzenegger’s office said failure of the bill will leave a $1.2 billion hole in the state’s budget and force the state to find other ways to release inmates to comply with a federal court order. A panel of federal judges earlier this summer ordered the state to reduce its inmate population by 40,000 over two years.

At least two other states — Kentucky and Michigan — already are releasing inmates early while others are considering similar moves to save money in a tight economy, a review by The Associated Press found last month.

“These are reforms that will make our communities safer, our prisons safer and give taxpayers a greater return on their investments,” Schwarzenegger said Wednesday after touring the devastation left by an Aug. 8 riot at a Southern California prison.