California's Prisons Are Overflowing

Under pressure from a Supreme Court ruling, California’s Correctional Department shoves inmates into county jails, where there will soon be intolerable conditions.

“The jail has no vacancy” was the title of a French comedy from 1959. For the authorities in California, this is now reality and no laughing matter. Both state and county jails are chronically overcrowded, and there is no money available for expansion. In May of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the placement of many inmates in California violated their human rights. According to the court decision, the state of California must reduce the number of its inmates by 32,000 within the next two years.

Only prolonging the problem

California has no money, so the government chose the simplest solution: Relocating prisoners from the state prison to the smaller county jails, which are not affected by the verdict. In the future, all sentences for less serious crimes should be served in the regional detention centers.

This has only shifted the problem. Los Angeles County announced in December 2010 that it has no more free prison cells. In October 2011, 600 additional inmates were scheduled to arrive in the Los Angeles County prison — but in fact, there were 900. The infamous Twin Towers Jail, located in the middle of Chinatown in Los Angeles and with 140,000 square meters (approximately 1.5 million square feet), allegedly the largest prison in the world, is bursting at the seams with 4,500 inmates. In neighboring Orange County, twice as many prisoners as expected were admitted. In a district of northern California, 50 delinquents who had violated probation were set free immediately, because they had no bunks for them. There are notorious thieves among them.

The shortage of space leads to difficult conditions. It especially batters the reputation of the Los Angeles prison. The FBI is investigating because prisoners were allegedly abused by the guards in 2009 and 2010. According to the Los Angeles Times, about a hundred incidents in which inmates were injured are listed in a report by the FBI. As a first measure, Daniel Cruz, who had led the prison until the end of 2010, was dismissed from his duties.

No more free accommodation

To avert the crisis in the prisons, all districts are now looking for quick solutions. House arrest or electronic ankle restraints are cheaper than accommodation in prison, but not without controversy. Sandra Hutchens, Sheriff of Orange County, complains about the dilemma: On one hand, people want criminals to serve their full sentence, but on the other hand, nobody wants to foot the bill for new prisons. In Riverside, a one-hour drive east of Los Angeles, the leaders came up with a peculiar idea. In the future, the prisoners should pay $142 a day for room and board behind bars. Thus the district wants to gain three to five million dollars per year, which experts think is absurd, since most prisoners cannot even afford a lawyer. They say they would only collect the fee from those who could afford it. This would apply to corporate criminals or celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Michael Jackson’s personal physician Conrad Murray, although even this venture would not be the trend of the entire state.

Shorter sentences — a way out?

The alternative to reducing the often drastic punishment is likely to fail with the citizens. Long prison sentences for criminals are popular. The sheer number of those serving a life sentence has quadrupled since 1984. In Los Angeles, Sheriff Lee Braca is considering putting more convicts in treatment or education programs, which would probably not be the worst solution. At this time, nobody would even think about saving money by a measure like the one introduced in Texas in April this year: There, the prisoners get only two instead of three meals on the weekend.