CA: Governor's prison reforms ignore 'linchpin' commission

Oakland Tribune ^ | 9/9/04 | Don Thompson - AP

[NormsRevenge]

SACRAMENTO -- As he tries to reorganize the state's troubled prison system, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is ignoring the key part of a plan recommended in July by a special panel he appointed, administration officials, lawmakers, experts and advocates said Wednesday.

The panel chaired by former Gov. George Deukmejian proposed eliminating the California Department of Corrections, California Youth Authority, and California Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, merging them into a new Department of Correctional Services run by a 10-member commission appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate.

"This system is in chaos," Joseph Gunn, executive director of the Corrections Independent Review Panel, told a Senate hearing. He called the system so far gone it can't reform itself without independent outside public oversight from a commission he called the "linchpin" of the panel's recommendations.

Instead of removing the governor's direct control and responsibilities over the state's prison system, Schwarzenegger wants to restructure the system under Secretary Roderick Hillman, Youth and Adult Correctional Agency Undersecretary Kevin Carruth said.

California's prison system is the nation's largest, with 32 prisons, a nearly $6 billion annual budget, 163,000 inmates and nearly 50,000 employees.

Carruth declined comment on the commission proposal, a stance that committee chairwoman Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, said left her "dumbfounded." The administration won't unveil its views until early next year, Carruth said, which Romero said may be too late to get legislative approval next spring.

"Corrections is in such a chaotic condition that drastic recommendations are called for," said Gunn. He and Romero said they are disappointed Schwarzenegger has failed to embrace some of the most extreme reform proposals by the commission, Legislature and the system's new inspector general.

The commission proposal is modeled largely on the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, said Gunn. Texas and Louisiana also have prison commissions but in different forms, Gunn said.

But a longtime critic of the prison system told the committee she also objects to creating a commission.

Sara Norman of the Prison Law Office, an inmate advocacy group that has repeatedly and successfully sued the state over prison conditions, said the commission would add a layer of bureaucracy while diluting individual responsibility for problems within the system.

Such a commission would be loaded with law enforcement officials and lack inmate advocates, Norman said, adding that a similar system in Alabama in the 1960s proved disastrous. Other critics said a governor-appointed commission could politicize the corrections system.

Merging the management of the youth and adult correctional departments could save $30 million annually, Gunn predicted.

But Wednesday's hearing follows another death within what national experts have called a draconian Youth Authority. Dyron Mandell Brewer, 24, of Oakland, was found dead early Sunday in his cell, the fourth ward to die this year. His family joined advocates at a San Francisco news conference Wednesday, questioning the circumstances of his death.

Romero and advocates worried merging the Youth Authority into a single prison system would further mask problems there.

But Gunn and Carruth said the youth system would maintain a separate emphasis on helping young offenders before it's too late, while losing only management functions that could be shared with adult prisons.

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On the Net:

Read "Reforming Corrections" at http://www.report.cpr.ca.gov/corr/index.htm

[Nova]

"163,000 inmates and nearly 50,000 employees"

That seems like a high employee/inmate ratio.

Most of the manual labor is done by inmates; including the cleaning, food preparation, building maintenance, etc.

What's the employee/guest ratio for hotels?