On Father's Day, a group of young activists from the anti-prisons group Critical Resistance stood in the midday sun outside the Twin Towers Correctional Facility with a huge card for visitors to sign. As echoing commands from the inmate reception center boomed from loudspeakers around them, the activists told a steady stream of visitors to the downtown L.A. jail that they could send a Father's Day message to the inside by writing on the card.
"I think he's going to be overjoyed with happiness, knowing that I'm by his side always," said a woman who only gave the name Deena, whose son Daniel had been behind the adjacent walls for five months.
Critical Resistance wants to stop the expansion of the prison system in the U.S., which now has more than two million inmates, at a time when
California is currently engaging in one of the biggest single prison expansions in its history.
On April 26, the legislature passed a bill to expand the state prison system by 53,000 beds, a $7.7 billion undertaking labeled "prison reform" that was supported by Democrats and Republicans without significant debate. The construction alone is huge: Assembly Bill 900 describes building projects phased over a period of years and funded by revenue bonds costing California taxpayers about $15 billion, including bond interest.
Bond interest and additional operating costs not included in the bill could drive the cost up another $2.2 billion per year, adding to the state's prison budget - which is already proportionally the highest in the nation, swallowing 8 percent of California's total budget.
"How irresponsible of elected official to pass a bill without even considering what its costs are going to be," said John Lum, public policy coordinator for Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) and Coalition for Effective Public Safety, two prison-reform groups working for alternative solutions to mass incarceration. "We've got massive social issues in California, and we don't need to be throwing money away on things that don't work."
Although he campaigned on promises of prison "reform," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has indicated he now supports prison expansion. With more than 172,000 prisoners locked up in facilities meant to accommodate about 100,000, the state's prison overcrowding problem has led federal courts to deem the conditions unconstitutional. AB 900 proposes to increase inmate rehabilitation capacity and create smaller facilities in urban areas, aiming to more effectively reintegrate inmates into society and reduce recidivism rates, currently at 66 percent.
Yet these proposed community rehabilitation and reintegration centers will house 500 inmates, a number too large to be effective, according to Lum, who has more than 30 years of experience working in corrections.
"They are deceiving themselves and the public when they say that this is being tough on crime," Lum said. "Simply locking people up and making them institutionalized, [while] providing little to no opportunities to return to the community as law-abiding and productive members, does not make them or us any safer."
CURB and other prison-reform activists are working to thwart prison expansion through the courts. They say what's needed is not more prisons but a discussion about sentencing reforms, to reduce the number of people incarcerated. In Sacramento, Lum and others in the coalition are looking for ways to challenge the legality of using revenue bonds without letting the public vote on it.
By providing various legal resources, information about prisoners' legal rights, and education about the politics of prisons, Critical Resistance works on a grassroots level to build relationships with people affected by prisons.
As visitors signed the Father's Day card, you could hear knocking sounds from one of the many small, rectangular windows in Tower Two.
"They can see us, but we can't see them," said a woman, looking up and waving.
As the day passed, the large cardboard card filled up with messages in English, Spanish, and Chinese from inmates' relatives, who also gave names and booking numbers of their loved ones so the greetings could be forwarded.
"A lot of people believe that fighting the legislative front, lobbying, and playing the system is the most effective system," said Austin Delgadillo, 24, a community organizer and member of Critical Resistance. "We see that, even with the way this [prison expansion bill] was passed, we're always running up against walls with these people. They are always going to protect their jobs and their careers over the interest of the people."
While advocates of alternative prison reform fight an uphill battle in a political environment that favors a "tough on crime" stance, and where most legislators are afraid of being seen as soft, polls show that building new prisons is a low priority among California voters. A May 2007 poll by the Public Policy Institute of California showed that only 32 percent think the state should be spending more money on prisons, whereas a majority supports increases in spending on education, health, and infrastructure.
"Prison expansion is not prison reform," Delgadillo said. "We know that if they build 53,000 new prisons beds they're going to overfill them, and then they're going to say we need to build more."
Originally published in Los Angeles CityBeat on 07/05/2007
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