According to its most recent census, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) reports that 287,444 adult Californians are living behind bars. This number has grown over the last 30 years eight times faster than the State's general population.
Over this same period of time, rates of violent crime and property crime decreased. Is the decrease in serious crime due to the high incarceration rates?
Not exactly. A report prepared by the Justice Policy Institute found that the number of people imprisoned for drug offences in California since 1985 saw a 25-fold increase. And no matter what their original offense, six out of ten former inmates will return to prison within three years.
California's criminal justice system is designed for incarceration not rehabilitation. Mass incarceration has enduring and costly consequences for individuals, families and entire communities. It is an unsustainable system, with a heavy taxpayer burden. California prisons soak up $10 billion dollars of the State budget an average of $49,000 per inmate. This expenditure drains government resources that could support education, alternative sentencing and other viable support and rehabilitation approaches.
The prison population has declined over the past six years, but the news is not as good as it appears on the surface. The most significant reason for the decline is that United States Supreme Court found that overcrowding threatened inmate health and safety. In 2011, the Court ordered Governor Brown to reduce the State prison population by 110,000 to 137.5% of capacity, down from 174.7% of capacity.
In other words, the reason for the reduction isn't because good social programs and alternatives are redirecting people away from arrest, prosecution and incarceration. In fact, some inmates have simply been shifted from prisons to county jails and other forms of incarceration.
Mental Illness and the California Prison System
As the total population of California's prisoners has grown in the past 20 years, so has the proportion of those inmates who suffer from mental illness. Recent estimates say 45 percent of the men and women in our state's prisons have mental illness. Not only are people with mental illness at greater risk of committing crimes, their sentences tend to be 30% longer than non-mentally ill inmates who have been convicted of identical crimes. Funding cuts to mental healthcare services have made it difficult for people with mental illness to get treatment that might prevent them from going to prison. And they are no more likely to have access to treatment upon release. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation puts the recidivism rate of people who are severely mentally ill at 80%.
The Cycle of Incarceration
People in California's jails, prisons and juvenile detention centers are connected by more than criminal prosecution. Many have experienced family trauma, poverty, addiction and violence. These circumstances don't predestine a sentence behind bars. But they put people at risk for entering into a persistent cycle that begins with arrest, leads to prosecution and incarceration and, for some, recidivism.
1952: Inmates at the California Institution For Men (Chino State) rest and socialize in front of their open cell doors.
2010: Inmates at Chino State Prison walk past their bunk beds in a gymnasium that was modified to house prisoners.
The Possibilities
We have the chance to make a change. By interrupting the costly cycle of crime and incarceration, we can ensure a more just and equitable future for the next generation. We can fill classrooms, not prison beds. We can rehabilitate inmates rather than isolate them. And we can favor human rights over human suffering.
There are people and projects doing amazing work to break the cycle of incarceration in California. We are focusing on three key areas for exploration and impact: Alternative Pathways, Sentencing Reform and Re-entry. We will be devoting our work this quarter to these three categories, and the proposals we receive will be evaluated against their ability to have impact in these areas.
Support is available throughout the cycle of incarceration—before, during, and after an arrest. Front-line organizations are intervening through community support programs outside the system; through policy reform to ensure fair sentencing on the inside; and through life-skills programs that provide support to people upon their release.
There is growing public interest and momentum to enhance these services and to help formerly incarcerated people have a fair chance at starting over. Comprehensive support in these areas gives people in the criminal justice system a serious opportunity to break the cycle once and for all.
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Alternative Pathways →
