Our view: Compromise boosts rehabilitation, but still plans to add to overcrowded system

It is impossible to find joy in the $7.4 billion prison reform bill approved by the Legislature on Thursday. It's not that the deal doesn't offer some improvements -- at that price, it would be a crime if it didn't -- but California's prison system is so dysfunctional, so overcrowded and so poorly served by our politics and politicians that even these bond-funded billions won't fix it.

In 33 prisons designed to hold 100,000 men and women, we are now squeezing about 172,000. Some 18,000 sleep in makeshift beds in hallways, recreation rooms and rooms that should be reserved for rehabilitation. And by 2012, the state's prison population is expected to reach 190,000.

The system is so broken that a pair of federal judges may opt in June to cap California's prison population to force the state to get serious about addressing its overcrowded prisons. Gov. Schwarzenegger called a special session of the Legislature last summer and a state of emergency in October to no avail.

So it's hard to work up much enthusiasm for the deal reached by Sacramento's Big Five -- the governor and Senate and Assembly leaders of both parties. A true compromise, the deal succeeds in satisfying just about no one.

Prison-reform advocates don't like the construction of 53,000 new beds, mostly at existing prisons, and lamented the lack of parole or sentencing reform. The prison guards union and their Democratic allies protested transferring 8,000 convicts to other states. Conservatives howled at the fiscal irresponsibility of a deal that would authorize $6.1 billion in lease revenue bonds, whose total cost could reach $15 billion, plus another $1.2 billion from the counties.

The silver lining

But the plan has some better aspects: Before the final 21,000 beds are built, the state must show it's significantly improving rehabilitation, the neglected stepchild of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The deal promises to pump $50 million into drug and alcohol counseling, education and job training and mental health services. That's not anywhere near the amount needed, but it's a big boost all the same.

Actually, the best news may be that San Diego County is ahead of the curve on rehabilitation. In 2005, the county was selected for a pilot project to design a comprehensive re-entry program for just-released prisoners. A wide coalition of partners is developing a network of services to help former inmates get work and stay out of prison. In a Tuesday Webcast discussion of the state's rehabilitation efforts, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's new director of addiction and recovery services singled out San Diego County as "way ahead of most of California on this."

Sentencing, parole need overhaul

But the county effort isn't enough to stop the state's slow-motion catastrophe. We need significant sentencing reform, including the tragic "three strikes" law, so that we're cramming fewer nonviolent offenders into overcrowded prisons. We need to revisit parole guidelines, so that fewer people are rearrested for only technical violations of their parole.

We also need to fully utilize 2000's Proposition 36, which mandated treatment instead of incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders. A February report by the state inspector general on drug-treatment services for prisoners found that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation isn't up to the job of implementing this cost-saving, space-saving and life-saving program. San Diego County could do a lot better, too: It's leaving a lot of money available for Prop. 36 treatment on the table, and the number of referrals to treatment has dropped dramatically, though the number of people being arrested on eligible offenses hasn't.

If the injustice of jailing people who need treatment doesn't sway you, consider the costs. A 2006 study by UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior found that California taxpayers saved nearly $2.50 for every dollar spent on treatment for nonviolent drug offenders under Prop. 36. By now, the total savings could be more than $1.5 billion.

But instead of finding ways to limit the number of people entering our overcrowded prisons, the best the Big Five in Sacramento could do was to borrow $7.4 billion to pay primarily for expansion, this time without asking taxpayers for the authorization. And that's why, despite the boost to rehabilitation, we can't get too excited by this halfhearted effort at prison reform.