the consequences of three decades of being “tough on crime".
all night they battled. hispanic inmates on one side, blacks on the other, they smashed glass to use the shards as knives and ripped off pipes for bludgeons, burning down part of the prison and injuring hundreds. the riot on august 8th-9th was not the first and won’t be the last in california’s dreadful prison system.
it occurred in a prison in chino, just east of los angeles, that houses nearly twice as many inmates as it was built for, about the same degree of overcrowding that plagues california’s 33 prisons as a whole. it is also one of the prisons that are currently trying to implement a 2005 ruling by the supreme court that inmates must not be segregated by race.
the overcrowding in california’s prisons, by far the worst in the country with only georgia and alabama coming close, has been the subject of lawsuits for years. the latest riot came just days after three federal judges, calling conditions “appalling,” ordered california to prepare, within 45 days, a plan to bring its prison population down to 137% of capacity in order to approach constitutional standards of decency. jerry brown, california’s attorney-general as well as a former governor and likely candidate for governor, has vowed to fight the order.
in the past three decades, california’s penal system “has gone from one of the best to one of the worst in the world”, says joan petersilia, an expert on prisons at stanford law school. in the 1960s and 1970s, california was a model for its success in rehabilitating criminals.
but in 1976 california decided to switch from “indeterminate” to “determinate” sentencing. the first system, emphasising rehabilitation, gives a lot of discretion to parole boards, who can reward good behaviour and also help with overcrowding by reducing inmates’ prison time. determinate sentencing, on the other hand, reflects a philosophy of deterrence and means that prison time is relatively fixed, whether an inmate behaves well or badly.
since then, california has passed around a thousand laws mandating tougher sentencing. many have gone through the legislature, where politicians of both parties compete to be “toughest on crime”. others have come directly from voters, who often bring a “crime-of-the-week mentality” to the ballot box, says barry krisberg, the president of the national council on crime and delinquency, a think-tank in oakland.
the result is a disaster, says ms petersilia. california spends $49,000 a year on each prisoner, almost twice the national average. but it still has the country’s worst rate of recidivism, with 70% of people who leave prison ending up back in it, compared with 40% in america as a whole.
the new prisons built in the 1990s to help accommodate the prisoners serving these tougher sentences have also helped contribute to the state’s fiscal crisis. last month’s desperate deal between the governor and the legislature to balance the budget includes cuts of $1.2 billion from prisons, but many republicans are objecting to the implication that 27,000 prisoners will have to be released to make these savings. for the time being, california’s prisoners remain crammed together—with predictable results.
30年来“打击犯罪”的结果。
他们每晚都打架。西班牙的是一派，黑人是另一派，他们打碎杯子，用玻璃碎片当刀，据断管子当做大头棒，还烧监狱，致使数百犯人受伤。8月8、9号的暴乱在加利福尼亚可怕的监狱体系下已经不是第一次了，而且也不会是最后一次
这次暴动发生在洛杉矶东边的卡诺，那里实际关押的囚犯是这座监狱建设时设计的容纳人数的两倍，这个问题同样困扰着加利福尼亚的其他33座监狱。他和许多其他监狱一样，仍然执行着最高法院的规定，并没有将犯人按种族的不同进行隔离。
加州监狱的超员现象现在在美国各州中是最严重，诉讼发生率非常高，其次就是乔治亚州和阿拉巴马州。最近的一次暴动就发生在三位联邦法官做出判决的几天后，他们提出的条件相当惊人，他们命令加州要在45天内准备出一个将监狱人数减少到容量的137%方案，以接近庄严宪法的标准。加州的司法部长，前州长吉瑞.布朗，很可能还是州长候选人，已经发誓要对抗囚犯的这一要求。
在过去的30年里，斯坦福法律学院监狱专家说加州的刑法系统在世界范围内从最好的下降到了最差的。在上世纪6、70年代加州在帮助犯人恢复正常生活方面做的很好，堪称典范。
但是在1976年加州决定从模糊判决变为确定判决。前者体系强调的是帮助服刑人员重返社会，假释委员会有很大的决定权，他们可以奖励表现好的人，减少其服刑时间，从而缓解监狱超员现象。相反的是，确定判决是威慑力哲学的反应，这意味着服刑时间是相对确定的，不管囚犯的表现是好是坏。
体制改变后，加州通过了大约1000条法规，规定了更加严厉的判决。许多法规都是经立法机关通过的，在这个过程中两党的政客都努力表现出他们对待犯罪是最严厉的。
现在的结果是一个灾难，皮特说。加州每年要在每位犯人身上花掉49000美元，是国家平均水平的两倍。但是他的犯罪率是这个国家最低的，有70%的罪犯出狱后还会再进监狱，而美国的总体水平是40%。
90年代严厉的审判开始执行后，一批新的监狱就应运而生了，以容纳大量的犯人，同时也导致了国家财政危机的暴发。上个月州长和立法机关进行了一场关于平衡预算的激烈争论，这其中就包括削减12亿的监狱预算的议案。但是这就牵连到一个问题，必需要释放27000名犯人才能减少费用，共和党我对此表示反对。暂时来看，加州的猎人还要挤在一起——这是可以预见的。