CCPOA's BLUEPRINT FOR REFORM (January 2007)

California's prison overcrowding crisis has reached the boiling point. A system designed for approximately 80,000 inmates is now bursting with more than 170,000. Prisoners are double-and-triple bunked in many facilities. Gymnasiums and classrooms are being used for emergency housing. Staff shortages make adequate inmate oversight and implementation of rehabilitation programs impossible. Prison healthcare is in the hands of a federal receiver and the rest of the prison system faces potential federal takeover - which could result in forced releases of inmates, required expenditures of additional billions of state dollars, or both.

Yet the prison crisis is one part of a statewide public safety crisis that defies simplistic solutions. At both the local and state levels, the criminal justice system suffers from inadequate and uncoordinated means of tracking and providing services to inmate and parolee populations, perennial and growing shortages of public safety personnel, insufficient space to house inmates and a disconnect between public policy choices and adequate funding to implement policy decisions.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) represents the more than 30,000 public safety personnel who work every day to manage the increased tensions and dangers that are exacerbated by prison overcrowding and insufficient staff. For years, we have worked to call attention to the increasingly dangerous prison system and the threat of a public safety disaster in communities throughout the state.

While the 2006 special legislative session brought high-profile attention to the severe prison overcrowding situation that has been growing for years, the hastily-crafted proposals that emerged during the session suffered from a lack of comprehensive vision and from a lack of a meaningful process for input from any stakeholders who are key to the ultimate success of any prisons plan - including CCPOA, other organizations who represent staff, local law enforcement, inmate advocates and local government representatives.

Now that a federal court has explicitly ordered California to address the overcrowding crisis or face the prospect of a court-imposed population cap, the Administration is pledging a commitment to resolve this long-standing and long-neglected issue. We offer our support to those legislative leaders interested in real reform.

Given the urgent need to take action on effective solutions to the prison crisis, this document is intended to provide CCPOA's perspective on key issues and to outline some important concepts that we believe must be included in a comprehensive approach to the state's prison and public safety crisis...

Download the full document, "CCPOA's Blueprint for Reform" from Resources..