Prisons in California
The California State Prison System is a system of
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had a $15.8B budget for the 2019-2020 fiscal year, which was 7.4% of the state budget ,
Facilities
California's first state prison was the
Today, CDCR owns and operates 34 state prisons. CDCR additionally staffs
The Legislative Analyst's Office describes four special missions for specific California state prisons, which impact their design and staffing:[4]
- Mental health
- Medical care
- High security
- Conservation camps(training incarcerated firefighters)
CDCR additionally makes the following designations:
- Reception centers: designed to house incarcerate people incoming to the state prison system while they complete an evaluation and receive a custody score. After that, they may be transferred to another prison for longer-term confinement.[5]
- Reentry hubs: while all facilities have some level of education, treatment, and pre-release programs,[6] reentry hubs provide specific reentry support to incarcerated people within 4 years of release, including cognitive behavioral therapy, job search skills, and financial literacy.[7]
California has two
Major court cases and policy changes
Over the past 4 decades, the California prison system has been substantially shaped by a set of legislative initiatives that caused a large increase in the prison population, which resulted in severe prison overcrowding and unconstitutional living conditions. Those conditions led to a set of court cases that mandated a reduction in overcrowding and changes to prison services, which resulted in a number of legislative initiatives to reduce overcrowding and improve conditions.
Year | Event | Effect |
---|---|---|
1972 | California Supreme Court decision in People v. Anderson | Struck down the death penalty. Proposition 17 reinstated it that same year. See Capital punishment in California for a full history. |
1976 | Senate Bill 42, Uniform Determinate Sentencing Act of 1976 | The introduction of determinate sentencing and subsequent increases in prison sentence lengths was the largest driver in a nearly 900% increase in California's prison population over the next 3 decades.[9] |
1994 | Proposition 184, Three Strikes Law
|
Part of a wave of "tough on crime" laws passed across the country, Three Strikes required a doubled sentence for any felony if the person convicted had a prior "serious or violent" felony conviction. It also required a mandatory 25-year-to-life sentence for any felony if the person convicted had two prior "serious or violent" felony convictions. Three Strikes was one of the largest drivers of California's increasing prison population over the next 2 decades. |
1995 | Federal class action civil rights lawsuit Plata v. Brown
|
The court ruled that CDCR failed to provide a constitutional level of medical care to its prisoners and ordered the state's prison medical care system be put into receivership. The receivership started in 2006 and is still active. |
2007 | Convening of three-judge panel in Plata and Coleman
|
Convened after California's state prison population peaked in 2006, this panel ordered the state to reduce its prison population to 137.5% of prison design capacity. The court order is still active. |
2011 | Assembly Bill 109, Public Safety Realignment | In response to the court mandate to reduce the state prison population, the state altered sentencing and supervision guidelines to shift responsibility for some prisoners to counties. Under Realignment, people with convictions for "non-serious, non-violent, non-sex" crimes serve their sentences in county jails and are under county community supervision upon release. |
2014 | Proposition 47, Reduced Penalties for Some Crimes Initiative | One of many responses to prison overcrowding, this approved ballot proposition change some felonies to misdemeanors, including some drug possession, petty theft, and forgery offenses. The proposition also permitted re-sentencing for people serving a prison sentence for one of the reduced offenses. |
2016 | Proposition 57, Parole for Non-Violent Criminals and Juvenile Court Trial Requirements | One of many responses to prison overcrowding, this approved ballot proposition allowed the parole board to release people convicted of "non-violent" crimes once they served the full sentence for their primary offense. It also required CDCR to develop uniform parole credits for good behavior and rehabilitative achievements, to incentivize rehabilitation. |
2016 | Proposition 64 , Control, Regulate and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana Act
|
This approved district attorneys announced that they would apply Prop 64 retroactively, resentencing or dismissing thousands of marijuana convictions.
|
Prison population and overcrowding
California's prison population grew dramatically after the passage of the
In response to this population growth, between 1984 and 2005 California built 21 of the 35 prisons that CDCR currently operates in the state (see
Since that court order, the state has taken several steps to reduce prison overcrowding. In 2011, California passed Public Safety Realignment, which altered sentencing and supervision guidelines to shift responsibility for some prisoners to counties. Under Realignment, people with convictions for "non-serious, non-violent, non-sex" crimes serve their sentences in county jails and are under county community supervision upon release. CDCR also contracted with private companies to incarcerate thousands of people in private facilities in other states.[11]
Other legislative changes to reduce prison overcrowding include
State corrections and rehabilitation costs
Since the 2007–2008 fiscal year (the oldest year with enacted budget records maintained online by the state), Corrections and Rehabilitation has been between 6.3% and 7.8% of the California state budget. In the 2019-2020 fiscal year, Corrections and Rehabilitation had a state budget of $15,788,581,000, or 7.4% of the total state budget, and was the 4th largest agency area budget.[12] The majority of that budget goes towards personnel costs, with an estimated 57,653 positions funded for the 2019-2020 fiscal year. CDCR funding is organized into the following programs:[13]
- Adult Corrections and Rehabilitation Operations
- Adult Health Care Services
- Adult Rehabilitative Programs
- Board of Parole Hearings
- Corrections and Rehabilitation Administration
- Department of Justice Legal Services
- Juvenile Services
- Parole Operations
- Peace Office Selection and Employee Development
The costs to run prisons are substantially subsidized by the use of incarcerated labor. Incarcerated workers do meal preparation, laundry, janitorial services, building maintenance, and other activities necessary for the day-to-day operations of a prison. Incarcerated workers are paid between $.08 and $.37 per hour for their labor.[14]
Demographics and statistics
Gender
CDCR divides the in-custody population into men and women. Men make up 95.5% of the in-custody population.[15]
Prisons facilities are designed for and run based on a specific gender. In 2019, the California state legislature passed SB 132, "The Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act", which will require that CDCR "house the person in a correctional facility designated for men or women based on the individual’s preference" starting in 2021.[16]
Two prisons,
Race
As of the most recent CDCR "Offender Data Points" report,[18] the California state prison population breaks down by ethnicity as follows:
Ethnicity | Population | Percentage |
---|---|---|
Black | 36,183 | 28.3% |
Hispanic | 56,275 | 44.1% |
White | 26,819 | 21.0% |
Others | 8,432 | 6.6% |
Sentences
As of the most recent CDCR "Offender Data Points" report,[19] the California state prison population breaks down by sentence type as follows:
Sentence Type | Population | Percentage |
---|---|---|
Determinate Sentencing Law | 53,304 | 41.7% |
Second Striker | 33,415 | 26.2% |
Third Striker | 6,901 | 5.4% |
Lifer | 27,328 | 21.4% |
Life without Parole | 5,117 | 4.0% |
Condemned | 722 | 0.6% |
Others | 922 | 0.7% |
Per the report, "Others" includes "those with commitment information not yet entered, those sentenced to prison for diagnostic evaluation, and boarders from other jurisdictions".
While California has a moratorium on the death penalty, it has the largest condemned population of any state in the United States.[20]
Death in prison
While the last execution in California was in 2006, incarcerated people die in California prisons regularly. The most common cause of death in prison is "natural causes" (old age, chronic illness, or disease), followed by homicide at the hands of a law enforcement officer and then suicide.
There were 9,909 deaths in CDCR custody from 2005 - 2018:[21]
Manner of death | Count |
---|---|
Natural | 5697 |
Homicide Justified (Law Enforcement Staff) | 1423 |
Suicide | 984 |
Accidental | 790 |
Pending Investigation | 569 |
Homicide Willful (Other Inmate) | 276 |
Cannot be Determined | 129 |
Other | 33 |
Homicide Willful (Law Enforcement Staff) | 4 |
Homicide Justified (Other Inmate) | 3 |
Execution | 1 |
Most suicides are via hanging. Most accidental deaths are from drug overdoses.
Prison conditions
The state's prison medical care system has been in receivership since 2006, when a federal court ruled in
In 2013, people in long-term solitary confinement in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison initiated a hunger strike in protest of the state's solitary confinement practices. A subsequent lawsuit, Ashker v. Governor of California, alleged that long-term solitary confinement violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, as well as due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. This court case ended the use of indeterminate solitary confinement in California.[23]
See also
- Incarceration in California
- List of California state prisons
- Three-strikes law: Effects in California
- Prisons in the United States
References
- ^ "California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: Monthly Report of Population As of Midnight April 30, 2020" (PDF). California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Division of Internal Oversight and Research. April 30, 2020. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 3, 2020. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
- ^ "Enacted Budget Detail". California Budget. June 27, 2019. Archived from the original on May 10, 2020. Retrieved May 9, 2020.
- ^ "Governor's Enacted State Budget Fiscal Year 2021-22" (PDF). CCJBH: 16 – via Criminal Justice & Behavioral Health Systems.
- ^ "The 2020-21 Budget: Effectively Managing State Prison Infrastructure" (PDF). Legislative Analyst's Office. p. 4. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 10, 2020. Retrieved May 9, 2020.
- ^ "Reception Center and Camps (Males)". California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Archived from the original on May 3, 2020. Retrieved May 3, 2020.
- ^ "Rehabilitative Programs and Services". California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Archived from the original on May 3, 2020. Retrieved May 3, 2020.
- ^ "An Update to the Future of California Corrections" (PDF). California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. January 2016. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 3, 2020. Retrieved May 3, 2020.
- ^ "California Capital Punishment". California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Archived from the original on May 17, 2020. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
- ^ a b "How One Law Helped Pack California's Prisons". KQED. January 23, 2012. Archived from the original on May 10, 2020. Retrieved May 9, 2020.
- ^ "Offender Data Points for the 24-Month Period Ending in June 2018" (PDF). California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. January 2019. p. 3. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 17, 2020. Retrieved May 17, 2020.
- ^ "California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Exits Last Out-of-State Prison". California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. June 25, 2019. Archived from the original on May 17, 2020. Retrieved May 17, 2020.
- ^ "Enacted Budget Detail". Department of Finance: California Budget. June 27, 2019. Archived from the original on May 23, 2020. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
- ^ "5225 Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation". Department of Finance: California Budget. June 27, 2019. Archived from the original on May 23, 2020. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
- ^ "Inmate Pay Rates, Schedule and Exceptions". California Code of Regulations. Archived from the original on May 23, 2020. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
- ^ "Offender Data Points" (PDF). California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. December 2018. p. 4. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 24, 2020. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
- ^ "SB-132 Corrections". California Legislative Information. September 9, 2019. Archived from the original on May 24, 2020. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
- ^ "Female Offender Programs and Services (FOPS)". California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Archived from the original on May 24, 2020. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
- ^ "Offender Data Points for the 24-Month Period Ending in June 2018" (PDF). California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. January 2019. p. 18. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 17, 2020. Retrieved May 17, 2020.
- ^ "Offender Data Points for the 24-Month Period Ending in June 2018" (PDF). California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. January 2019. p. 10. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 17, 2020. Retrieved May 17, 2020.
- ^ "Death Row". Death Penalty Information Center. Archived from the original on May 25, 2020. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
- ^ "Death in Custody & Arrest-Related Deaths". Open Justice. Archived from the original on May 25, 2020. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
- ^ "The Future of California Corrections" (PDF). California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 25, 2020. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
- ^ "Ashker v. Governor of California". Center for Constitutional Rights. Archived from the original on May 25, 2020. Retrieved May 24, 2020.