Will 'Tough-on-Crime' Derail the California Budget?

Hours after California lawmakers reached a tentative agreement on a budget deal Monday night to begin the process of bailing the struggling state out of debt, Republicans balked at the details behind $1.2 billion in anticipated cuts to the prison budget.

The plan would send some sick elderly prisoners to non-prison hospitals, transfer some non-violent prisoners to house arrest for the last year of their sentence and shorten sentences for non-violent prisoners who earn a GED. A sentencing commission would review the state's policies and recommend adjustments that aren't such a budget drain. These are sensible reforms, and it's a shame that it takes a budget crisis to bring them about. But we'll take progress any way we can get it, and the enemies of sensible prison policy will stop it any way they can - usually by screaming about how 'dangerous' these non-violent prisoners will be when they get on the street.

"Budget negotiations depend on the good faith actions of all parties," Assembly Republican leader Sam Blakeslee of San Luis Obispo said in a statement.

A proposal to release inmates early was "never discussed or agreed to by Republicans," he said. "We made it abundantly clear during negotiations that such policies would endanger the public and were unacceptable."

Leigh Graham wrote yesterday about the deep cuts proposed across the California system, and I share her sadness over for the many Californians who will be harmed by cuts to health insurance, public schools and public housing. It upsets me even more that one of the few lines in the budget that could be improved through some serious cuts - the bloated and overcrowded warehouses of state prisons - is among the hardest to cut.

I've written before about the budget woes forcing states (including Kentucky, Washington, Michigan, Alabama and North Carolina) to reconsider sentencing and prison policy. As I said above, it's a shame that it's the budget - rather than compassion or increased awareness of alternatives to incarceration - that bring us to these crossroads, but money is often at the root of reform.

These cuts and reforms are among the best hopes we have for holistic sentencing improvements in our country, and we may need to wait a few years for the cutbacks to have a statistical impact. Shortening sentences and offering incentives and alternatives to incarceration are smart policy. They don't increase the crime rate, they decrease it by providing people a way out of the system. It would be a grave mistake for California to miss this opportunity.