Assembly delays vote on prisons package, will remove sentencing review from bill

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass has put off a vote on a package of legislation intended to trim spending on state prisons, and she intends to eliminate a provision of the plan that would have created a commission to reevaluate California’s sentencing laws, according to an Assembly source who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

After keeping Assembly members until midnight Thursday in the hope of reaching a deal on prisons, Bass (D-Los Angeles) said she would try to approve it today. But based on conversations over the weekend, she still does not have enough votes from the Democrats who control the chamber.

“When we arrive at a responsible plan that can earn the support of the majority of the Assembly and makes sense to the people of California, we will take that bill up on the Assembly floor,” Bass said in a statement.

Bass and Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) met with representatives of law enforcement on the issue this morning.

Legislation is needed to approve more than $500 million of the $1.2 billion in prison cuts in the budget deal reached by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers last month.

On Thursday, the Senate passed a package that would achieve the savings through measures including home detention, changes to sentencing laws, shortened prison terms for inmates who complete rehabilitation programs behind bars and ending parole supervision for lower level offenders. Those provisions were estimated to reduce the number of inmates in state prisons by 37,000 over two years.

The Senate plan also included a sentencing commission to reevaluate the state penal code by 2012.

Based on the objections of Assembly Democrats, many of whom are running for higher office, Bass previously stripped out the home detention and other components. But there were still some sticking points.

Although Bass agreed to bolster the law enforcement representation on the sentencing commission, Assembly member Alberto Torrico (D-Newark), one of three Assembly Democrats running for attorney general, said Sunday that a key issue remained: how much power lawmakers would have over whether to implement the panel’s recommendations.
 
Under the Senate’s plan -- and in the Assembly version, until now -- the commission’s recommendations would automatically take effect if the Legislature and governor failed to reject them. That way, even if lawmakers rejected the panel’s findings, they would still go into effect if the governor vetoed the lawmakers’ vote.
 
“The notion that the Legislature would not be required to vote on a sentencing commission proposal, I just think it’s real problematic,” Torrico said.

-- Michael Rothfeld, in Sacramento

Comments

[Jim]

looks like our law makers are still stuck on the idea of 'lock everyone up and keep them there'.

not a very creative bunch of people.

[John Crippen]

It seems to me the only people benefiting from Schwarzenegger are crooks... Prisoners, politicians, and corporations that he see's fit. When are we going to impeach this idiot and see true reform? The deficit has practically tripled under his alleged leadership.

John Crippen, Author of 'The Sweet Smell of ASH in the Morning'.

[Bob Johnson]

I wonder if the clowns who vote for this will invite some of these released animals down to their houses to stay with them and their families.

[KK]

Do the math. Housing 170,000 immate at $49,000 each. No wonder the state is bankrupted. Most people don't even make 49K per year.

[Alex T]

We are outsourcing so much to India and China why not just send them some prisoners. Our cost is $49,000 per prisoner per year. I bet The Chinese or Indians could do it for less tan $10,000.

[WW]

Keep electing these liberals in California and we will have more of this. California spends $17,000 per prisoner on health care and a liberal federal judge has ordered the state to spend billions of dollars on new hospitals for prisoners. The average working citizen of California wishes he or she had $17,000 to spend on their own family's health care. We need to vote everyone out of office and start with a new batch of part-time legislators. Maybe if the elected official had to go back to their job every few months and face their co-workers we would have better laws.

[Yessi]

Really????
Lawmakers should really be focused on more important things like education. Kids in California might not be getting new textbooks for a long time yet people in Sacramento are worried about prison cuts. If they would stop spending so much time and effort incarcerating people who only have minor offenses (like possession of drugs then they would not be having that kind of problem. what they should do is let people that have minor offenses go and just keep the sick and hard criminals. This whole idea of making revisions to the sentencing laws and the durations of thoses sentences is a joke. If they do that, murders will be walking the streets much sooner, all for the sake of money

[HOMERUN]

The Commission is a needed factor in this prison package bill...the scales of justice are crooked---off balance---and in need of major adjustment...the scales of justice without the Commission will further to be a danger to public safety. Public safety is at risk by those who use false evidence on the scales of justice to deceive a jury...public safety is at risk by those who tamper with evidence OFF the scales of justice that was proof of innocence...the Commission is needed for the adjustment in the scales of justic...its about public safety.

[TA]

Many people knew 25 years ago when the incarceration trend began, that these strategies were financially and socially unsustainable. It was an easy political response to a complex problem where once again, our lawmakers remain unaccountable for policies that bankrupt the state both economically and morally. Do citizens really feel any safer now that 170,000 people are being warehoused in prisons? Until we have have some bold, creative and visionary leaders who can re-imagine justice, we can expect little more than the same tired and ineffective approaches that we have seen in the past that have little effect on public safety and continue to serve primarily the special interests of the system.

[Deanna Cherry]

I'm disappointed they couldn't pass this plan. They need to release non-violent folks into community based programs that are 1/5 the cost of prison. Without sustained rehabilitation there's no end to the growing prison population. We are either going to plan our way out of this situation or bankrupt our children on the false hope that locking people up makes us safer.

Karen Bass needs our support to get something proactive and less reactionary passed. Like global warming this is an area where the people need to lead the politicians.

[DOGROB1]

My concern about the prisons package saving measure is with home detention increase the more that you would send home the money you would have to spend to keep track of these people, the sentencing law if changed would increace the most prevalent crimes, in house rehabilitation programs was to be decreased or discontinued because of cost, ending parole supervision for lower leval offenders, who will monitor them to prevent prevalents, will they be put on summery probation only to be lost in your mass populous which would cost more money for tracking and apprehension again increasing prevalence in crime. The state has become a place of repeat offenders which by every means will cost the state dearly=DECEIVE TO ACHIEVE

[K.S.P.]

Prisoners that serve over 20 years as first offenders, should be released. As well as the sick and elderly. The repeated offender's should stay. But the legislature act's like it's too much paperwork to go over. Then hand it over to the fed's they seem to get it right. Another idea is that they can send the repeated offenders under 25 years old to the military. Bring back the Draft......

[John Conners]

Here's an enlightening website that takes a serious look at the policies, grandstanding, and pseudo-ecology attempts of Mr Schwarzenegger to appease the environmentalists. He stands for nothing, but loves to put on a good show.