California, caught in the perfect storm of one-party rule and Federal dictatorship.
California has long been the epicenter of prison litigation. But for cataclysmic force and sheer staying power, nothing beats two massive and now inextricably intertwined class-action lawsuits. The Prison Law Office, California’s leading prisoner-rights organization, filed a suit in 1990 arguing that the mental health care provided to the state’s mentally ill inmates violated the U.S. Constitution. A second Prison Law Office suit in 2001 extended the argument to the entire prison health-care system. Hundreds of judicial orders have flown forth from these two cases, specifying such management arcana as bed planning. Each order was preceded by a furious exchange of motions between the plaintiffs’ attorneys and the state, and was followed by more dueling motions over compliance. Taxpayers pick up both sides’ legal bills, which, from 1997 to 2009 alone, excluding payments to experts, cost $38 million.
The federal judge presiding over the mental health-care case, Coleman v. Brown, installed a special master to oversee mental health treatment. The master’s fees now total $48 million. The judge overseeing the general health-care case, Plata v. Brown, put all prison health care under the control of a federal receiver, with the power to set budgets and make policy. (Though filed long before Brown returned to the governor’s office, the cases now bear his name.) The receiver has forbidden the prison system’s central management from speaking with prison doctors and medical staff without his permission and outside the presence of his own attorneys—a wildly dysfunctional arrangement. California now spends $17,924 per prisoner on medical treatment—six times what Texas spends, four times what the federal government spends in its prisons, and three times New York’s rate. Health care makes up one-third of California’s prison budget.
It’s a thorough article detailing the appalling background and current state of dysfunction in the California prison system.
As you may know, I deal with this on a daily basis. I’ve watched the AB109 unit in my office as the cases have doubled, then double again as Parole cases are added to the PRCS cases. County jails have become a revolving door and, with 500 crimes (almost all property crimes) removed from any state prison eligibility, the “county prison” inmates are reoffending at jaw-dropping rates.
The Fed dictators along with the radical progressives who believe virtually no one should be incarcerated (well, except for teabaggers) care not one bit about crime victims. While crime has been falling in other states, ours is rising.
This is a warning … so goes California, so goes …
As a small business owner here in California, I had a former worker steal some equipment from a job site. He was seen, but got away before he could be stopped. The crime was reported to local PD, and a case number obtained, because I intended to prosecute, but he was in the wind…
A few weeks later, some of my guys reported him at a mobile home park in the same city, so they called me, and then they swarmed in and used vehicles to block his escape, and called the police. He started walking away, so the guys trailed him on foot, on the phone to police the entire time. He had just made it to the front entrance of the park when the patrol car arrived. Upon being informed of the facts, including the active case number, and the fact that there was a property theft warrant out on this guy, the police officer replied, “Unless it involves blood, drugs or kids, we don’t have the time.”
Punch line: He then threatened to arrest the guys who had blocked in the wanted thief’s truck for “unlawful detention”, but his radio squawked at him, so he drove off.
True story.
John & Ken, local radio hosts, have been on this story for a long time. Last night they were discussing it again in detail and I was shocked to hear that after many of these felons are found to be committing new crimes (drugs, theft, etc.), they spend almost no time in jail (average is 7-10 days) and are put right back out on the street. Somebody that was interviewed noted that it’s no longer a revolving door, it’s a turnstile.
And recall, Jerry Brown’s latest plan to address this was to pay other states to house the overflow criminals. Unfortunately, the state legislature rejected his proposal because instead of wasting money paying for prison space they want to use the money for “counseling” and “rehabilitation”.
IIRC, policemen were created because “self help” could get kinda messy. Let’s bring back “the good old days”.
1. Open up a season on felons. I suggest New Years through Halloween, with an archery felon season from Halloween to Thanksgiving.
2. Sell felon licenses.
3. Define the practice of law as a felony.
4. Raise prices on felon licenses because of all the fresh demand.
Hey, I need a waiver! Maybe if I contribute to his O-ness?
The solution is pretty obvious it seems to me
give California back to Mexico.
ClownDisasterSolicitorGeneral proves an admirable straightman to the Justices’ as comedians, albeit gasping comedians even as they make their jokes.
That’s not right, Ernst. My mom and dad and two of my brothers live there.
If they like their state they can keep it.
I have a brother in California, but from what he tells me Mexico might be an improvement.
You’ve got to break a few egs to make huevos rancheros.
Eggs will need to be broken, as well.
give Ernst? I expect something in exchange. Some plaster burro banks, a few dozen corn tortillas, some Bimbo baked good, something.
I am more in favor of giving Hawaii to Obama and sending all his drones there to live with him. Hope they don’t capsize the islands.
give California back to Mexico
They can have the coastal counties. The rest of us further inland, the ones with the guns, intend to hang on to our property.
hey, I live in a coastal county.
You people in the flyover counties really think you are so more independent than thou.
Which coastal county? It may be one we want to keep.
No probably not, Santa Cruz. I was born in Santa Barbara county. It and San Luis Obispo county are probably worth keeping. Ventura county maybe too.
Good to learn, bgbear. My family is in Santa Barbara County. Keep this up and I’ll tell them not to let you inlanders use the beaches.
That will only matter until the coastal areas sink into the Pacific… (hey, what’s a good rhyme for “San Andreas”? I need it for the earthquake dance.)
Sorry. The next colossus of an earthquake is scheduled for the Madrid Fault that runs right under St. Louis, MO.
You haven’t seen my earthquake dance… *waggles eyebrows*
“rhyme for “San Andreas””
Kathleen Sebelius
Sandy Anus.
Dr. Zaius.
Pambasilaeus
Drum
What PD was that??
If it’s in my jurisdiction, I’m going to raise holy hell …
It’s a little town out in Riverside county, but the county mounties are no better.
I mind me of a time when we had crappy neighbors, and after several spectacular middle of the night fights, he was actually choking her in the middle of the street. We turned on all our lights and called 9-1-1, but because we were three blocks outside that city’s limits, the local cops wouldn’t come, and it was 45 minutes before the sheriff’s showed up, by which time the woman had been taken in by neighbors across the street.
The sheriff’s car did a slow speed drive-by, but never stopped, never knocked on any doors, and didn’t even come to our house to get a statement, even though we had called.
We bought our first gun a few weeks later.
Arizona’s courts are suffering from a different flu-bug. Namely, they are swamped with gardianship cases involving the unwanted children of foreign nationals, most of whom do not speak English.
File this under the “Latin Culture is Immiscible with Anglo Saxon Culture” label: last week I sat in a Cochise county court for about two hours waiting for a foreclosure case to begin, and over that period the judge considered no less than twenty-three “Gardianship” cases. Every single one of these cases involved adults with Latin surnames. Of the 23 cases heard, defendants showed-up for only three of them. And of the three, all required a translator to re-represent them to our Anglo-Saxon court. Additonally, the defendants were delinquent in delivering their annual reports (required by law) to the court on schedule, or they delivered reports written in a language other than English. This can only strain our state’s civil society to breaking point.
As to the “no-shows” defendants, their default guaranteed that their gardianship rights were terminated on the spot, the child or children concernd be damned!
I was in court to receive a default judgement against the owner of a lot I own the tax lien on. The judge’s ruling in my favor involved only real property, which has no feelings, suffers little from maleducation, and never needs to be fed, clothed and comforted. But, in contrast, the hard business of guardianship, which involves living breathing children, and their wayward parents – all Latino, highlighted the heartless, apathetic traits of one side of the tribal divide in Southern Arizona.
The racialist industry in Tucson, of course, will deride my anthropological conclusion, and will prefer to fix the blame of this divide on the left’s bogey-man, White Oppression, instead. But the industry’s disregard for Latin culture’s manifestations in Anglo courts only blinds them to the sufferings of the victims here, Latino children. And, this industry’s reflexive reach for critical Race theory to explain what is a cultural, not racial, phenomenon can only damn another generation of Latin children to the hell that is the state’s administrative agencies for lost children.
What heartless bastards these Lefty racists are!
There is an epidemic in our Latino population of not caring for its children, and of palming the resp0nsibilities of raising its young-uns on the larger Anglo population. “Let Whitey raise ’em!” they seem to say.