Prison Construction Bill Dies in Committee

Californians United for a Responsible Budget, a statewide anti-prison coalition, is claiming victory when Senate Bill 445 Revenue Bond Financing of Prison Construction died in Assembly Public Safety on Thursday.

"This is just the latest desperate attempt by San Mateo County to finance a jail they can't afford. We learned about the bill on Monday and had an out pouring of opposition.  Hundreds of our coalition members contacted the Assembly Public Safety Committee to express their concern" said Annie Morgan Banks of CURB. “Despite the overwhelming opinion of California residents being against jail construction, attempts to fund construction projects are still being whipped up and rushed through the approval process.  And as we’ve seen for the past 30 years, it’s community members in California, who bear the brunt of the devastating social and economic cost of these terrible schemes.”

According to a Wikipedia article, the California state prison population rose 500 percent between 1982 and 2000. The state of California built 23 new prisons to accommodate the growth at a cost of 280 million to 350 million dollars apiece.

State Sen. Jerry Hill submitted the bill Monday after using a "gut and amend" tactic, according to CURB.  The bill was originally a pharmaceutical advertising bill, and the new bill gave San Mateo County preference for state funding to help it finance a $165 million jail in Redwood City.  San Mateo has failed to receive three rounds of jail construction funding from the state thus far.

Present to testify in opposition to the bill was long-time San Mateo resident and Executive Director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children Dorsey Nunn.

"This jail is being pushed over the objections of San Mateo County residents,” Nunn is quoted by CURB.  “The only people I've seen in support of the notion of building a new jail were local politicians, jailers and people in the jail building business."  

Speaking in support of SB 455 were San Mateo County Sheriff Munks and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of CA.

CURB advocates for funding education, feeding the hungry, job training, youth centers and rebuilding community infrastructure among other constructive projects.

In a 2011 article written for www.care2.com (http://www.care2.com/causes/in-california-spending-on-prisoners-easily-outweighs-spending-on-student...), author Judy Molland quoted statistics that state more than $50,000 a year is spent to keep an inmate in state prison in California while California spends $7,440 per K-12 student.

Reversing that funding would lead to further savings within the state penal system. Educational programs and strong community infrastructure have repeatedly shown a corelation to reduced crime.

Gov. Jerry Brown has been trying to fight a Supreme Court order to release about 9,600 prisoners to improve conditions in the state prison system. Brown is arguing that California has reduced the prison population by more than 46,000 inmates since 2006 by sentencing lower-level criminals to county jails instead of state prisons.

According to the CURB website (http://curbprisonspending.org/), it is a broad-based coalition of over 40 organizations seeking to CURB prison spending by reducing the number of people in prison and the number of prisons in the state.