Are Prisons Failing?

Ten years ago, I was serving time in High Desert State Prison. Fast forward to now and I am the poster child of what reform and reentry hope for. If you would have told me this would be the case all those years ago, I’d be in disbelief. In the past ten years, we’ve seen a flurry of criminal justice (CJ) reforms passed in California’s state legislature, many of which are blamed for every public safety ill. Recidivism rates have slightly declined during that same period and hover around 50% returning to prison within three years of release.1 The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has also increased its budget for rehabilitation programs to “$520 million in FY 2020-2021” but as a Stanford study notes, it’s still only 4% of the department’s total budget.2 Some folks believe more prison time will reduce crime, even if we accept that assumption, what does prison do to prevent people from committing crimes once they are released? As someone who was incarcerated in California, I have some thoughts.

With the recent discourse around defunding police departments and renewed attacks on criminal justice reform, it’s important to consider what we receive for the billions of dollars we spend on incarceration. For fiscal year 2021-2022, the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) calculated that it costs California $106,000 to incarcerate someone, with two-thirds of that spent on security and inmate health.3 For this price tag, we should expect to see better results than a nearly 50/50 success/fail rate. Of that, $106,000, $3,652 is spent on rehabilitation. Studies collected by the Brookings Institute and a Rand study in 2013 for the Bureau of Justice Assistance indicate that education reduces recidivism. Rand’s study concluded that “inmates who participated in correctional education programs had 43 percent lower odds of recidivating than inmates who did not.”4 Considering that it costs on average $40,000 for one academic year at UC Berkeley, it seems that education is a far better investment to ensure people don’t return to committing crimes. Unfortunately, even when there are education programs in a prison yard, it can be very difficult to access them. Let me walk you through some of the challenges I saw during my eight years in CDCR.

My Educational Experience

In the eight years I spent in prison I was able to get my GED and take courses in horticulture and plumbing, plus community college classes. This sounds great, and it was for me but that does not reflect the average inmate's experience. I was able to take my GED exam when I arrived at La Palma Correction Center within a few weeks because I was thrown into the cohort that had been waiting for months. When I went to High Desert, I was fortunate that Feather River College was proactive in expanding courses within the facility and I had a lot of free time in the maximum security yard. As a college student, this was great until my security level dropped to medium. During my time there, transfers from one facility to another were supposed to consider the inmate's needs for rehabilitative programming and proximity to family. I requested to stay at High Desert or go across the street to Susanville so I could finish my AA. Instead, I was sent back to Arizona.

Life on the yard

If my experience isn’t common, what’s it like for most people? La Palma was an exceptional place to get programming because we were hardly on lockdown there. In the normal California prisons, lockdowns were common for various reasons. Lockdowns could last years, meaning that some people were in GED classes for years without ever going to an actual class let alone taking the test. Most people knew they were more likely to transfer to another facility before finishing an education program so they make the most of whatever benefits they can gain. In CDCR there are privilege categories that determine how much yard or dayroom time you have as well as increased commissary and package limits. To get the highest privileges you need an “assignment,” which could be a job or an educational program. In the higher security facilities, there are fewer “assignments” and less time outside of your cell. Some people felt it was better to stay in their education assignment by failing their GED or education program to keep their privileges. Interestingly, when I took community college classes in High Desert, the classes didn’t qualify an individual to receive privileges. GED classes were universal and during my stay, they added anger management and substance abuse programs with certifications but vocation programs were very rare. Additionally, Feather River College wasn’t in every facility but you could take mail correspondence courses, which did not include postage, and if you missed an assignment because the mail didn’t get there on time, that was on you. From what I’ve heard, programs have been steadily increasing but the budget shows it remains a small investment.

On The Outside

Assuming one could get as much of an education as I did, how confident are inmates that opportunities would be readily available? A large percentage of the population, including myself, believed that all we had in our future was one prison term after the other. This belief was fueled by the lack of education, skills, work experience, stigma, and financial need we felt would lead us back behind the walls. At this point, some readers might think to themselves, “Why don’t they just work and not get in trouble?” An analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative found, “that formerly incarcerated people are unemployed at a rate of over 27% — higher than the total U.S. unemployment rate during any historical period, including the Great Depression.”5 They also note that prior research has shown employers discriminate against formerly incarcerated folks and that the first two years after release are when unemployment levels are the highest. So, if we know prisoners aren’t being educated or trained and upon release, they are discriminated against by employers, then it’s not surprising when we continue to see high recidivism rates. $106,000 a year per inmate for half to return in three years is hardly good fiscal stewardship let alone a humane or effective public safety policy. My success would not have been possible without the support of my family who stuck with me for eight years, and many in Oakland who gave me a chance and provided opportunities I never dreamed of.

What policy changes could be made?

As we have conversations about public safety, it’s important to think beyond arrests and sentencing. Those are the most immediate solutions people reach for but they’re expensive, inefficient, and can contribute to the lack of safety in communities. Incarceration doesn’t address why crimes happen, rather it kicks the can down the road at an expensive cost. Addressing the economic, educational, and other social needs everyone has is how we make communities safe. If we can’t do this at the front end, then we should invest at the back end when the State has completely failed our communities.

Here are my recommendations for how we can improve.

1. Expand educational programs and ensure the facilities focus on that.

2. Prisons should stop leveraging vocational and highly sought-after programs to control the population.

3. Invest in the Male Community Reentry Program (MCRP).

4. Partner with workforce programs to develop training programs and connect them to local organizations as they’re preparing for release.

5. Finally, invest in public education. This means we should get serious about repealing Prop. 13 which has starved not only our education systems but all of our public agencies.