California has the second largest prison inmate population in the United States and spends $47,000 annually per inmate, whereas education in the state ranks 49th in the country and spending is only $8,482 per-student.
Yet Gov. Jerry Brown has continually rejected efforts to release inmates early for good behavior from overcrowded prisons, which has had a negative impact on California’s public education system over the years.
The overwrought problem with California’s prisons today is that they are incredibly overcrowded and poorly run.
Two decades ago, a class action lawsuit was filed against the state by inmates that resulted in a federal court mandating reforms in prisons for mental health care.
Most notably, a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court ruling stated that California’s prison conditions were so inextricably poor that they violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. One of the reasons dated back to 2006 when the state prisons were running at 200 percent capacity.
Over the past few years, California has acquiesced to Federal Court demands to reduce the number of inmates, but Brown has refused to decrease the prison population by the required 9,000 inmates to reach the court-ordered level.
In fact, he seems adamant to ignore what the courts have ordered, stating that he will only comply if the Supreme Court orders him to, despite a federal court’s threat to hold him in contempt of court.
Brown’s position is untenable because of the current spending levels on prisons, which continues to detract from higher education in California.
When prison spending goes up, education spending plummets, according to a report by the California Common Sense, a non-partisan non-profit dedicated to government transparency.
Perhaps the sprawling prison-industrial complex in California can revamp its punitive approach towards prosecution, starting with non-violent drug offenses that too often lead to high unemployment among released prisoners. That may be why seven out of ten prisoners in California return to jail or prison within three years, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
An approach that emphasizes self-reflection and civic participation, in effect, can greatly reduce the differences between citizen and inmate.
Today, instead of taking that approach, inmates are continuously thrown out of prison only to fail in society, something that is evident by California’s 65 percent recidivism rate.
Norway’s prison system, for example, encourages inmates to build personal responsibility, making them comfortable enough to re-enter the work force after serving their time. That might explain why Norway ranks higher in happiness than the good ol’ U.S. of A.
