In a recent TV ad, you asked Californians to stand behind you in a "balanced budget". How can I do that when I know you're balancing the budget on the backs of 4,500 non-violent offenders who are doing life in California's abysmal-condition prisons at outrageous costs to the State?

It is time to sit down with Families to Amend California's Three Strikes (FACTS) and its coalition partners and implement proposals to release non-violent offenders back into their communities.

On March 20, 2007 in a letter you told me "Three Strikes is a proven deterrent to crime" and that passage of Three Strikes puts us "on the right track to making California a safer place to live".

Three Strikes is not a proven deterrent to crime and its passage has not put us on the right track to making California a safer place to live.

Three Strikes and the prison industrial complex have put us in the poor house, taken mothers and fathers from children who we stick with grandparents or in foster care, and ruined poor communities of color by robbing the communities of our men.

The Justice Policy Institute estimates the costs of enforcing the Three-Strikes law between March 1994 and September 2003 was $8.1 billion. Of that amount, $4.9 billion is paying for inmates serving for nonviolent offenses.

California's prison population has increased sevenfold in the past 25 years because of America's "war on drugs". In 1980 California housed 25,000 prisoners, today it's over 175,000 and while it is appropriate to put violent offenders away for a long time, prisons are overcrowded mainly because so many marginal activities have been criminalized. If we're serious about creating a more humane society and a prison system that is not simply a graduate school in how to get away with it the next time, we need to look at reforming drug laws, the "three strikes" law, and harsh sentences for marginally harmful activities.

At a cost of $1 million to incarcerate each prisoner (more if they're elderly or sick), Californians are finally recognizing the billions for prisons is an expense the state cannot afford.

In 2004, Proposition 66 would have averted the present budget crisis by limiting felonies that triggered the second and third strike to violent or serious crimes. It would have eliminated residential burglary from the list of serious felonies that qualify as strikes (except when prosecutors prove someone was in the home at the time of the burglary). It would have also allowed prosecutors to count only one strike per prosecution instead of one strike per conviction, as current law requires, and it would have increased penalties for child molesters.

Instead of supporting Proposition 66, you stood with Henry Nicholas III to defeat Proposition 66 by alleging "over 26,000 "murderers and rapists" would be released into the community".

The solution to overcrowding, of course, is sentencing and parole reform and fully funding Proposition 36 to get rehab to those who need it while they are still employed and taking care of their families. Real parole reform alone will free up 50,000 beds immediately since the 50,000 released on parole every year go back to prison within nine months because of technical violations. A "technical violation" unfortunately is subject to shifts in policy. In the case of intensive supervision for example, it's been shown that supervising parolees more closely and enforcing their parole conditions more vigorously, without a system of graduated sanctions, sends more people back to prison but does not reduce the crime rate of the offenders under supervision.

California leads the nation in sending people on parole back to prison, and parole violators now represent 67% of all admissions to California prisons.

Testimony before the Little Hoover Commission showed that investing more money in programs designed to change parolee behavior will have little benefit unless significant changes are made to the policy framework within which those programs operate. A reinvestment strategy that moves funds from state corrections budgets to new forms of community-level reentry management must be made to save money and reduce crime.

I'm asking you today as I've asked you every year since 2003 to do the right thing and release the 4,500 non-violent offenders doing life under California's Three Strikes Law.

Please call FACTS at 213-746-4844 to set up a time to discuss how to help balance California's budget by implementing a process to release non-violent offenders back into our communities.

Sincerely,

Donna J. Warren, CGFM

FACTS Member

Comments

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1. Comment by Elaina Jannell, Aug 1st, 2009 10:28am

   S.E.I.U. is the service worker's employees union. There are many of their members who work in California state prisons, but they are not the correctional officers union. That is CCPOA.
   
   Elaina Jannell, Ph.D.
   AFSCME Local 2620
   State Social Service Workers




2. Comment by jane rahn, Jul 29th, 2009 8:32am

   Too much of our economy via vendors is tied into the prison industrial complex. Supreme court judges own stock in Vanguard that finances the system. This rot goes to the very top of our political system. Diane Feinsteins husbands consulting firm makes hundreds of millions by advising seiu; the prisonsguard unions. We need to stop worrying about Gitmo and start worrying about the neglect and abuses going on right here in the calif. prisons. We need to examine who is calling the ball or who is the umpire, and after that keep our eyes on the ball, or in other words. Who is getting the money off of our suffering, When is someone going to hold the govt. responsible for the drugs coming into this country and ruining lives. How many mothers have lost our loved ones in the war on drugs? More people die here in this country as a result of drugs than in the war in Irag. This is not about public safety, its about jobs for the state workers. How many more police officers do we need before the politicians feel safe, a million , 2 million? Slavery is well and flourishing.Jane