Posted on 01/27/2005 7:07:18 PM PST by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO (AP) - Changing the bureaucracy of California's troubled youth and adult prison system would again make the state a national leader in imprisoning criminals and then rehabilitating them, representatives of the Schwarzenegger administration said Thursday.
The corrections plan is the leading edge of Schwarzenegger's larger proposal to reorganize state government.
Lawmakers, union leaders and inmate advocates said the proposal merely shuffles organizational chart boxes, and particularly objected to more closely affiliating the California Youth Authority with the adult Corrections Department.
But the plan won general praise from members of the watchdog Little Hoover Commission.
The prison plan and a companion proposal to eliminate dozens of state boards and commissions are before the commission for three days of hearings this week. By law, the commission will make recommendations before legislators conduct up-or-down votes on proposals they are not permitted to alter.
The corrections plan is "an opportunity to make a significant change in a system that's been overworked, overburdened and improperly managed," testified Youth and Adult Correctional Secretary Roderick Hickman, who would head the new Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "The current organization was designed for a different era."
Since then, the prison system has ballooned with no significant organizational change, Hickman said. The administration wants to combine redundant administrative functions and concentrate power and responsibility at the top of the pyramid, at Hickman's level.
At the same time, the pendulum would swing toward preventing crime, rehabilitating inmates and keeping ex-convicts from returning to prison, reflecting Schwarzenegger's view that "Corrections should correct."
The most significant way to slow prison population growth is to trim the number of ex-cons returned to prison for parole violations or new crimes, Hickman said. Based on other states' results, California could see an annual 2 percent to 3 percent drop in recidivism, or 2,000 to 3,000 fewer inmates returning to prison.
But the prisons are so crowded, with inmates triple-celled or bunked in day rooms and gymnasiums, that there will be few prison closures or other significant cost savings immediately, Hickman said.
Schwarzenegger's plan may be a start, but what's needed is "an extreme makeover" for a system that has been criticized by national experts and a federal court-appointed monitor, said Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles.
Hickman should "go back to the drawing board" to revise a plan that now projects it will take years to make basic reforms, said Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Daly City. She also questioned the administration's commitment to reform, noting, "We add 'rehabilitation' to the name - then we slash $95 million from the budget" for inmate education and other programs.
Moreover, Romero and Speier said the Youth Authority - which they called, respectively, "an utter failure" and "a house of horrors" - should be separated from the adult system completely and dedicated to community-based rehabilitation programs.
Don Spector, director of the Prison Law Office that has frequently and successfully sued the department on behalf of inmates, said the prison system "is ungovernable because it's too big." Problems can't be fixed by consolidating the adult and youth systems into one even bigger agency, he said, joining a parade of calls to retain a separate Youth Authority.
Hickman spokesman J.P. Tremblay said the plan would keep adult and youth prisons separate but allow adult education, vocational, psychiatric and other services to be more freely shifted to aid youths if needed.
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On the Net:
California Youth and Adult Correctional Agency: http://www.yaca.ca.gov
California Department of Corrections: http://www.corr.ca.gov
California Youth Authority: http://www.cya.ca.gov
Little Hoover Commission: http://www.bsa.ca.gov/lhc.html
California Correctional Peace Officers Association: http://www.ccpoanet.org/
http://www.bakersfield.com/state_wire/story/5244730p-5274282c.html
The Associated Press
Here's a look at the proposal to reorganize the state's prison system:
- The Youth and Adult Correctional Agency becomes the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
- The department contains adult and youth divisions, replacing the current California Youth Authority and adult Department of Corrections.
- Administrative functions are consolidated under a new division providing both youth and adult institutions with education, rehabilitation, health care, training, psychological, vocational and other services.
- A new joint parole division and Board of Parole Hearings replaces current separate youth and adult parole boards.
- Internal affairs units that independently serve the adult and youth agencies are consolidated.
- Wardens - whom critics say have too much power - would no longer be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate, but would be hired and fired at will and stripped of some administrative duties.
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What happens next:
- The Little Hoover Commission makes a recommendation to the governor and Legislature on the administration's reorganization plan. Legislators can't change anything, but a majority vote in either the Senate or Assembly in 30 days can block the reorganization.
If approved, the shift would take place in July.
Place your bets.
yeah, right!
the mexican mafia controls california prisons.
When programs don't work, simply change the name. Somewhere in the correctional process (whatever that is) we fail to consider that not only the majority of crominals have no interest in "new and innovative" governmental rehabilitative concepts, but lack the motivation to conform to societal standards.
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