The Bay Citizen reported that California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) saw an increase from the state’s general fund from three percent in 1980 to 11.2 percent this fiscal year. During the same time period, money for University of California and California State University declined from ten percent to 6.6 percent. Although most states have seen an increase in spending in the criminal justice area, California has been under fire from educators and outraged citizens who believe monies would be better spent on educating Californians rather than keeping them locked up.
The Citizen requested statistics from the state Department of Finance in the area of DCR funding. The report found:
In 1979 California spent $1.9 billion on education, and $625.4 million on corrections
In 2011 UC and CSU are receiving $5.7 billion compared to $9.6 billion that the DCR will receive
Since 2007 funds for higher education have decreased yearly
According to the Bay Citizen, reasons for increased spending on corrections are many:
An increase in the number of inmates resulting in higher spending. In 1980 California’s prison population numbered 25,000. In 2010 that number jumped to 165,000.
Fixed prison terms, also known as determinant sentencing, force judges to sentence those convicted of a crime to a mandated amount of time.
The Three Strikes Law keeps people in prison for life, even for minor crimes.
Speaking to the Bay Citizen,Barry Krisberg, of UC’s Berkley School of Law, Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute of Law and Social Policy, claimed that the salaries and benefits paid to correctional officers contributes to the rising cost of corrections. Further, according to Krisberg, an increase in prison health care, the result of several successful lawsuits against the DCR, as well as the hefty salary of prison medical staff, are other reasons for the spike in correctional budgets. The average cost of incarcerating one person in a California prison per year is $50,000.
The Bay Citizen quotes Krisberg as stating “California is clearly the worst in the U.S. for what we get and what we spend. California has the largest prison system in the U.S., it is the most expensive per capita rate in the U.S. and the state has some of the highest recidivism rates of any state in the nation."
Source: Jennifer Gollan and Sydney Lupkin, The Bay Citizen
August 30, 2011
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