{"id":313016,"date":"2017-06-16T00:45:44","date_gmt":"2017-06-15T23:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/california-replaces-its-prison-industrial-complex\/"},"modified":"2017-06-16T00:45:44","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T23:45:44","slug":"california-replaces-its-prison-industrial-complex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/california-replaces-its-prison-industrial-complex\/","title":{"rendered":"California Replaces Its Prison-Industrial Complex"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>California made headlines last week when Governor Jerry Brown allocated a record $11.4 billion to the state\u2019s corrections department in his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ebudget.ca.gov\/FullBudgetSummary.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">May Revision<\/a> to the budget, translating to $75,560 per individual \u2014 the highest per-inmate cost in the nation.<\/p>\n<p>Media outlets ran amok with headlines comparing the costs of imprisonment to tuition at the country\u2019s premier private university.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<i>That\u2019s enough to cover the annual cost of attending Harvard University and still have plenty left over for pizza and beer<\/i>,\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/best-states\/new-york\/articles\/2017-06-05\/correction-california-prisons-costs-story\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> quipped Don Thompson<\/a> of the <i>Associated Press.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Yet in consideration of decreasing prison populations and statewide \u2018reforms,\u2019 this five-figure sum is more alarming than amusing.<\/p>\n<p>Since 2006, California\u2019s inmate population has gone down by <a href=\"http:\/\/sentencingproject.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Fewer-Prisoners-Less-Crime-A-Tale-of-Three-States.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">nearly a quarter<\/a>, due in part to <a href=\"https:\/\/mic.com\/articles\/41531\/union-of-the-snake-how-california-s-prison-guards-subvert-democracy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a Supreme Court mandate<\/a> that found conditions in California\u2019s notoriously overcrowded prisons to be \u2018cruel and unusual punishment.\u2019 The inmate population further declined after California passed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/political\/la-me-ff-prop-47-drug-possession-20141103-story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a proposition<\/a> in 2014 that reduced sentencing for nonviolent drug offenders. Still, the annual corrections budget has continued to increase, with current costs now double what they were in 2005.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmi-gold-silver.com\/blog\/buy-old-us-gold-coins\/?utm_source=LRC_Text_Ad&amp;utm_campaign=buy_old_us_coins\">Time to buy old US gold coins<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>But the very same budget report that allocates $11.3 billion to corrections also predicts an additional population <i>decrease<\/i> of 11,500 inmates over the next four years.<\/p>\n<p>So what gives?<\/p>\n<p>Part of the answer, at least, comes down to prison unions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<i>It\u2019s an example of how powerful public-sector unions keep the state from getting spending under control, even when the need for such spending plummets<\/i>,\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/californiapolicycenter.org\/prison-unions-punish-california-taxpayers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">wrote<\/a> Steven Greenhut in an op-ed for the California Policy Center.<\/p>\n<p>The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) is one of the most powerful public&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2017\/06\/no_author\/california-replacies-prison-industrial-complex\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>California made headlines last week when Governor Jerry Brown allocated a record $11.4 billion to the state\u2019s corrections department in his May Revision to the budget, translating to $75,560 per individual \u2014 the highest per-inmate cost in the nation. Media outlets ran amok with headlines comparing the costs of imprisonment to tuition at the country\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-313016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}