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From the LA Times

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California might act to jail more drug offenders

A move to increase funding to anti-drug units could result in increasing the state's prison population at a time when it's under order to reduce overcrowding.

by Eric Bailey

August 18, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento - Two weeks after federal judges ordered California to reduce its prison population, an arm of the Schwarzenegger administration is set to vote on increased funding to police anti-drug units, potentially putting even more offenders behind bars.

An advisory board for the California Emergency Management Agency is expected to decide today whether to channel $33 million in federal money to narcotics task forces around the state that have proved particularly adept at apprehending drug criminals.

Critics of government drug policies say that money should instead be directed to drug-treatment programs whose funding has been sliced amid California's budget woes.

"While one side of the government is addressing prison overcrowding, another side seems to be acting directly counter to that goal," said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy state director of the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance.

The bulk of the money is slated to help multi-jurisdictional task forces in all 58 California counties that investigate and apprehend narcotics offenders.

Money also would go to marijuana-suppression efforts around the state and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, which coordinates with federal agents on border drug trafficking.

John Lovell, a spokesman for the California Narcotics Officers' Assn., called the Drug Policy Alliance opposition "predictable" but wrong at a time when Mexican drug cartels are boosting methamphetamine production and operating marijuana plantations in state forests, including the one blamed for starting a wildfire Aug. 8 in Santa Barbara County.

He said the spending on anti-drug task force efforts is "not only appropriate, it's too bad the amount isn't larger."

Dooley-Sammuli believes the bulk of the money would go toward generating more arrests of street-level offenders, not on cracking down on high-level drug criminals.

"We're not getting the best bang for our buck," she said.

As now envisioned, the state's anti-drug-abuse enforcement program could have its funding boosted substantially over last year, in part because of nearly $20 million in federal stimulus money allocated in July.

The Drug Policy Alliance estimates that the increase could yield 13,000 arrests during the coming year, resulting in prison time for nearly a quarter of those apprehended, at a cost of $160 million.

Funding for drug treatment programs was slashed roughly in half from $120 million two years ago.

Meanwhile, the state is grappling with pressure to reduce prison crowding.

This month, a three-judge panel ordered the state to shrink its prison population by more than 40,000 in the next two years.

Last month, legislators approved a $1.2-billion reduction in prison spending.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-drug-police18-2009aug18,0,4516478,print.story

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Protesters carry guns outside Obama event in Phoenix

One carries a military-style rifle. Arizona law allows people to carry their firearms visibly in public. Gun-control opponents call the situation a disaster waiting to happen.

Associated Press

August 18, 2009

Phoenix - About a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, milled among protesters outside the convention center where President Obama was speaking Monday -- the latest incident in which protesters have openly displayed firearms near the president.

Gun-rights advocates say they're exercising their constitutional right to bear arms and protest. Those who advocate gun control say it could be a disaster waiting to happen.

Phoenix police said the gun-toters, including the man carrying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, didn't need permits. No crimes were committed, and no one was arrested.

The man with the rifle declined to be identified but told the Arizona Republic he was carrying the weapon because he could. "In Arizona, I still have some freedoms," he said.

Arizona is an "open-carry" state, which means anyone legally allowed to have a firearm can carry it in public as long as it's visible. Only a concealed weapon requires a permit.

Last week, during Obama's town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., a man carried a sign reading, "It is time to water the tree of liberty," and stood outside with a pistol strapped to his leg.

"It's a political statement," he told the Boston Globe. "If you don't use your rights, then you lose your rights."

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said people should not be allowed to bring guns to Obama's events.

"To me, this is craziness," he said. "When you bring a loaded gun, particularly a loaded assault rifle, to any political event, but particularly to one where the president is appearing, you're just making the situation dangerous for everyone."

Representatives of the National Rifle Assn. did not return calls for comment.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-guns18-2009aug18,0,7971400,print.story

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OPINION

Opening California cell doors can free up needed budget money

Rather than playing to fears that dangerous criminals will be released, state officials should be explaining that a court order to reduce the prison population dovetails with the need to cut costs.

by Jamie Fellner

August 18, 2009

On Aug. 4, a panel of three federal judges ordered California to reduce its prison population to address grossly deficient medical and mental healthcare systems behind bars. The ruling makes for harrowing reading.

Because of massive overcrowding, the court noted, California's prisons have become perilous places where inmates and staff are at risk of disease, mental illness and death. Inmates face "incompetence, indifference, cruelty and neglect." Preventable deaths occur weekly. Psychotic inmates are left untended. And serving a term under these conditions makes prisoners more likely to commit new crimes when they are released.

This was not the first time California was ordered to change. But after almost two decades of litigation, remedial plans, goals and measurements, receivers and special masters, the state's prison medical and mental healthcare systems have scarcely improved. Any gains have been quickly swept away by the ongoing tsunami of a growing prison population.

Conditions are so horrific that four former and current heads of prison systems in California and other states -- including two who have never before testified on behalf of prison plaintiffs and most likely never will again -- testified against the state and agreed that drastic action was necessary.

No one in California ever intended the prison system to operate at almost double its intended capacity. But no one took care of the problem either.

Numerous private and public commissions chronicled the conflict between an ever-expanding prison population and constrained resources. They put forward eminently sensible solutions to staunch the inflow of prisoners without compromising public safety -- reducing returns to prison for minor parole violations, reducing recidivism by providing programs to prisoners that would equip them to succeed on the outside, and reforming senselessly harsh mandatory sentencing.

But their carefully marshaled evidence and arguments have been ignored. Whether from a lack of will, clout or guts, California officials failed to avert this long-foreseeable crisis.

Nearly three years ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger finally recognized the "conditions of extreme peril" in his state's prisons and declared a state of emergency. Since then, though, he has done little more to address the problem than to blame the Legislature. The Legislature, a remarkably fractious, undisciplined and unprincipled body by any measure, in turn has proved effective at blocking good ideas to reduce the prison population -- and ineffective at approving any.

So it has been up to the courts. The genius of the country's founders was to create a system that authorizes federal courts to act when the executive and legislative branches acquiesce -- through sins of omission or commission -- to blatant constitutional violations.

The court's decision that the state must cut its prison population by 40,000 over two years comes at a propitious moment. Because of the unprecedented budget crisis, the state must reduce its expenditures -- among which prison costs figure greatly.

The fiscal imperative of cutting corrections expenditures thus dovetails with the constitutional imperative of reducing overcrowding. Reducing the prison population will also free up resources needed to improve medical and mental healthcare and for expanding cost-effective, community-based rehabilitation programs that will in turn help reduce the prison population even further.

Unfortunately, Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, eyeing a possible run for governor, talks of appealing the federal judges' decision. That would be foolish. He should sit down with corrections officials, legislators and other stakeholders to help map out sensible ways to meet the court's order -- the court left it up to the state to determine how best to cut the population; for example, by keeping more low-level nonviolent offenders out of prison and by releasing the elderly and disabled.

Instead of pandering to the public's fears, Brown and other state officials should explain that the court order does not mean that dangerous murderers and rapists will be released. Instead, a smaller prison population will enhance community safety, as well as meet the dictates of the U.S. Constitution, common sense and fiscal responsibility.

No other state faces a prison crisis as acute as California's. But most face the pressure of relentless prison population growth, and all of them face strained budgets. Many already have woefully deficient prison medical and mental healthcare services.

Absent a miraculous and massive infusion of cash, states face a choice. They can reduce prison populations by instituting sensible criminal-justice policies, reserving prison for dangerous offenders and using alternative strategies for low-level, nonviolent offenders and parole violators. Or they can go the California route and let the crisis get steadily worse until the courts intervene.

One can only hope that economic necessity and the court order will finally lead California to do the right thing. It remains to be seen whether and when other states will follow suit.

Jamie Fellner is senior counsel for the U.S. program of Human Rights Watch.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-felner18-2009aug18,0,1333932,print.story