‘A Really Bad Person’

Steve Poizner, a candidate for governor of California, recently told the Sacramento Bee: “You have to be a really bad person to get into state prison.” He went on to explain that because everyone in prison must be dangerous, he can’t support any early releases.

Last week, I wrote about labels like offender, prisoner and inmate. Where does ‘ really bad person’ fall on that scale? This is about as clear as you hear it from politicians: any ideal of rehabilitation is false, once you go to prison, you may as well disappear.

Just A Guy, a California State Prisoner (and therefore a really bad person) who writes a blog at the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about Poizner’s blanket dismissal recently and the wrongheaded way California is confronting the court order to reduce its prison population from 150,000 to 110,000 by 2011.

Some quick background on how California got here: a panel of three federal judges recently ruled in a class action suit filed by a group of prisoners that the state was violating their constitution rights by denying them any semblance of health care. The state’s prisons were designed for 80,000 prisoners and they’re now almost at 200% capacity (with 150,000). The judges ordered the state to reduce crowding to 137% by 2011, which means reducing the population by 40,000 prisoners. Or…

You knew it wouldn’t be that easy. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his infinite wisdom, is proposing another explosion of prison construction to ease overcrowding. Just keep building prisons, leave the laws alone. That ought to do it.

I could rant and rave for hours about why I think this is a terrible, nearsighted, counterproductive idea, but Just a Guy - who lives in one of California’s prisons -- does it better than I could:

The biggest threat to public safety is not the people in prison or their releases (most of them are going to get out anyway). It’s consistently cutting money for health care, education, welfare and myriad other programs that help to create a brighter future for Californians. Public safety also means maintaining roads and bridges, supplying water, educating citizens etc. The best way to have public safety is to have an environment that creates hope, not antipathy.

Read Just a Guy’s full column here.

And get the Sacramento Bee’s take on Schwarzenegger’s plan.