Walters: Cutting prison expenses vital to California budget fix

DEMAND THE FEDERAL E-VERIFY SYSTEM FOR ALL EMPLOYERS AND MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL ALIENS WILL SELF-DEPORT. BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WILL BECOME AVAILABLE FOR EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE AND THE PRISON SYSTEM

ANOTHER TRAVESTY OF OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO CITIZENS AND PERMANENT RESIDENCE RIGHTS?

Is there no accountability by any State, county or city government for demanding taxpayers, cover the costs for any illegal alien family that breaks our laws. JUDICIAL WATCH, is a legal watchdog using the power of the courts, to fight political corruption, illegal immigration, sanctuary states and city police enforcement, alien gang member deportation, 247(g) police enforcement and sham border fence. Learn about the liberal lies that for six years the press have suggested their are only 12 million illegal aliens squatting in America. Nor do they inform you that our nation welcomes more legal immigrants, than any country in the world. Find the ugly facts at www.judicialwatch.org, www.numbersusa.com and www.americanpatrol.com

Thanks for the article, Mr. Walters.

WE WOULD SAVE SO MUCH MONEY if parole denials by the governor and parole boards had to be justified, rather than allowed to be rubber stamped as denied.

WE WOULD SAVE SO MUCH MONEY if the parole system were fixed so that victimless, minor infractions did not send ex-felons back to expensive prisons.

WE WOULD SAVE SO MUCH MONEY if we provided life skills and vocational training and supported ex-felons in finding jobs and housing when they are released.

WE WOULD SAVE SO MUCH MONEY if sentences were not unreasonably long. They make us less save when inmates are released and it cost a lot of money to keep people locked up many years for just for retribution.

WE WOULD SAVE LIVES AND MONEY too if mental hospitals were not replaced with prison time.

Restoring the car tax would encourage some to take public transportation, thus benefiting society and the State.

Senator Runner, who wrote the flawed Jessica's Law, opposes restoring the car tax. Congressman Buck McKeon supports the Auto Ownership Tax Assistance Bill that increases the number of cars on the roads.

hey Walters, you missed the mark on Mr. Taylor's flawed concept of shifting "shifting some 14,000 low-risk inmates -- primarily drug abusers and drunken drivers -- from state prisons to local treatment programs". I'd bet 75-80% of these offenders are repeat graduates of local treatment programs administered by the counties. That's one reason why they're in prison. Mr. Taylor conveniently missed looking into the doubling of the size of CDCR Headquarters since Rodney Hickman's reorganization and Matt Cate taking over when Hickman resigned. Instead of spewing misinformation from some poorly written document from LAO, why don't you look into the number of upper managers who had jobs created specifically for them. Start with Mr Cate's Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff and a few others immediately around them. You'd be surprised what you'd find if you actually looked at the operation yourself like a good old fashioned newspaper person and not some undergrad student plagiarizing someone else's book report.

Being that 25% of inmates in California prisons are strikers should prove to anyone, California Three Strikes Law was poorly conceived and cast far too wide a net on non-violent offenders. Three Strikes was sold to the public with ads paid for by the prison guards union. It was supposed to take the murderers. Rapist and child molesters off the streets. Ok, that sold lots of voters! But that is not how it was applied. Today there is not one person serving a life sentence under Three Strikes for 1st degree murder. There are 690 doing 25 to life for simple drug possession. Really a misdemeanor, but the DA’s call them so called wobblers and use them to met out life sentences! There are 346 serving life for shoplifting! 81 lifers for receiving stolen property. The big lie is that the prior strikes must be violent! Not true! Burglary is the serious offence that most priors came from. And Three Strikes can come out of one case and juvenile cases at age 16- 17 years of age can count as prior strikes. So if you stole a bike in 1970 at age 16 and got into a fight at age 17 and were charged with burglary and then assault. You could be struck out 10 or 20 years later for simple drug possession! And that is exactly what happened to thousands of men and women. Three Strikes needs to be fixed! It would save California tax payers 1 billion dollars or more by doing so and bring true justice and rational sentencing back to California.

The prior poster is certainly entitle to critize Mr. Walter's editorial. I wish he/she had explained more about the people and circumstances he/she mentions in the post.

His/her comments include no suggestions for fixing the California prison and budget crises, or even an opinion on the car registeration tax. I hope he/she will post again and talk about those points.

My comment about the previous poster was meant for the post, "Hey Walters, you missed the ...".

I certainly agree with Frank Courser's opinion that the Three Strikes Law should be fixed. It is a failure that cost too much and ruins lives unnecessarily.

Did anyone see the article, try Google, on the $266,000 in fines levied against the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo for dumping more pollution into the water there? The pattern of non compliance with the State's own laws is costing us multi-millions of dollars. We need to demand a full audit of what Jerry Brown is costing us by not prosecuting those who are breaking the laws and participating in state murder by medical neglect. We need to see all the expenses for more than 50 attorneys, buildings, secretaries, filing fees, travel, that we are paying out because our Attorney General and Governor will not uphold the state or federal laws. We also need to see the death toll, the wrongful death lawsuit payouts (which the people deserve), the cost of this mismanagement must be in the billions of dollars. It is hidden across several budgets and the media is not allowed to interview specific inmates.

Diverting 14,000 prisoners to county drug programs won't do much if those slots are immediately filled up with new people arriving on technical parole violations for things like missing an appointment with their parole officers.

We need serious reform. The feds have done away with parole and haven't missed it. Its a holdover from the days when we had indeterminate sentencing and people needed to be supervised in order to see if they had been rehabilitated. Now we don't even pretend to rehabilitate. That's something we should fix.

Over half 57% of the people doing time on 3-strikes are in for nonviolent offenses. Over half 53% of the people returned to prison in 2007 are technical parole violators (as you yourself reported). There are a huge number of people serving time for drug possession, mostly for pot.

The idea that you can force people to stop using drugs by sending them to drug treatment is ridiculous. People quit when they want to quit, but it has to be their own choice. We would all come out ahead if we legalized pot and taxed it. But somehow we just can't face reality and admit that our brute force approach to drugs doesn't work.

For anyone that is interested in where to find information on Three Strikes. Go to the California Department of Crrections click on Population Demographics http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Quarterly/Strike1/STRIKE1d0812.pdf You will see who we give life sentences to and why.

Some great books with research studies to prove that prisons do NOT protect the public safety. The opposite is true. When mismanaged they are criminal colleges and disease hotboxes. Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse Studies in Crime and Public Policy by Todd R. Clear (Author) ------------ --------- -- Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration by Devah Pager....... ......... Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed. .. by Jonathan Simon....... ......... . The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration by Marie Gottschalk.. ......... ...... Prisoner Reentry and Crime in America ( Cambridge Studies by Jeremy Travis...... ... Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh ------------ Punishment and Inequality in America by Bruce Western (Author)

Rally date to end prisoner murder by medical neglect, and get the mentally ill into hospitals has changed to Tues Feb 3, Fed Courthouse, 450 Golden Gate Ave., San Francisco at 9 am sharp, meet by the flagpole. Then we'll go up to Judge Thelton Henderson's courtroom on the 19th floor. Important to be on time. Court has changed date to Feb 3. Bart comes within 3 blocks, take the civic center exit, Parking Underground on McAllister Street. Bring people, the inmates are being forced to drink poison water at many CA prisons. Part of their sentence was not to give them cancer.

I find it ironic that the CDCr claims to spend $45000per inmate per year. The food the inmates receive in my opinion is worth about $1.50 per day, or about $500 per year. The families of inmates spend lots of money to buy additional food for them. Or the inmates work for pennies an hour, and after paying 55% restitution, earn about $20 per month for full time labor so they can buy the overpriced food to supplement their diet. The cooking of the food is done by the inmates themselves so that's not a cost. The health and dental care are so poor, they usually create lifelong consequences for the inmates. Whether it is ignoring a major medical concern that can cause all kinds of bodily harm, or whether it's extracting a tooth that merely needs a filling or root canal, the medical care does not cost anything close to $45,000 per year. Clothing is mostly bought by family members. So what really costs $45, 000 per inmate per year. The over-paid guards are the ones costing us so much money. But our teachers are still severely under-paid. But the governor ignores court orders to fix the medical neglect. Now he wants to get rid of the person, Mr. Kelso, who has actually started fixing the corrupt system. Arnold forces inmates to transfer out of state to private prisons, which are more corrupt and receive virtually no oversight, all for a private entity's profit. Arnold will do anything to avoid fixing the corrupt prison system. He has absolutely no respect or compassion for the lives affected by this crises.

There is no doubt inmates in California have to be released, but the there has to be major oversight as to which inmates to be released. The inmates who have been in and out of prison need the most rehabilitation. The state needs a panel of intelligent people to look at every inmates case and their behavior inside prison. Studies show that most of LWOP (life with out) inmates are least likely to commit another crime. The inmates that have life who didn't commit a crime toward society and never will need to have a review by an intelligent panel for release. If California just starts releasing inmates by certain guidelines the most dangerous will fall in general guidelines. Some of the low-level inmates are more violent than the inmate that have life for one huge mistake, but has been a model inmate and if given a chance would be safe in society. California has to be smart, dig deep with intelligence on which inmates to be released.