March 24, 2010
California finds that prison costs aren’t so easy to cut
The billions of dollars that California pours into its troubled prisons — a number fattened by court-ordered medical spending and sky-high personnel costs — have become an increasingly attractive target for leaders desperate to trim the state's $20 billion deficit.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in January called for a constitutional amendment that would cap prison spending and put the savings toward public universities. And since last summer, lawmakers have tried to wring more than $2 billion from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, once budgeted for $10 billion.
But despite officials' attempts to clamp down after watching costs double over the past decade, some corrections spending is proving impervious to the budget ax...
LINK - MercuryNews.com