Background

  Nearly 7 in 10 people arrested for felonies in California are convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor. Nearly 9 in 10 of those who are convicted serve time behind bars. Precise numbers are not kept, but nearly four in 10 felony convictions are estimated to result in a prison term.
CDC's inmate population increased from 23,511 in 1980 to 154,000 in 1997. The growth was accommodated by building 21 new prisons and by adding beds to some of the 12 previously existing prisons.
In fiscal year 1996-97, CDC admitted 132,581 inmates. Of those, nearly 49,000 were newly sentenced to prison by the court. The balance -- more than 82,000 -- were parolees returned to prison for violating the conditions of their release or having been convicted of a new crime.

Background

More than ever before in history, the criminal justice system in America is defined by its jails and prisons. In this regard, California is again a trend setter.

In 15 short years, California's prison population has increased six-fold. The 21-prison construction program necessary to secure those inmates represents the largest of its kind in the nation's history -- a $5 billion investment, plus interest.

Despite the building program, however, the State's jails and prisons are more crowded than ever before. Most county jails long ago gave up trying to hold all of the pretrial inmates or low-level offenders who could be held under the law.

State prisons are so full that corrections officials openly anticipate prisoner riots or court-order releases, or both. Another 17 prisons over the next five years, they assert, are needed to put off that day of reckoning for another 10 years.

In short, a greater percentage of people are being incarcerated for longer terms. Still, approximately 90 percent of all prison inmates are eventually released back into the community -- most within a couple of years.(6)

Once released, however, most fail to successfully integrate into society and are returned to prison. Within two years of release, most felons have been convicted of yet another crime and are again back in prison.

The End of the Line

Hundreds of organizations in California play a role in the criminal justice system that is intended to protect public safety -- law enforcement and social service agencies, the courts, and at the end of the line, county jails and state prisons.

California has 57 county jail systems operated by locally elected sheriffs. (The 58th county, Alpine, contracts with El Dorado County for jail services.) County jails have four fundamental functions: to book suspects who are arrested, to house some defendants awaiting trail, to punish the convicted who are sentenced to local incarceration, and to hold inmates awaiting transfer to other facilities. For every offender in county jail, four offenders are on probation and also under county supervision. In addition, counties operate facilities and probation programs for juvenile offenders.(7)

The county systems are for the most part funded locally and operated independently. County jailers are required to comply with state standards for construction and operation of facilities and for staff training. Establishing standards and inspecting local facilities is the primary responsibility of the state Board of Corrections.

At the state level, the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency (YACA) is responsible for inmates who are sentenced by the courts to state prison terms. The bulk of the State's responsibility is carried out by the California Department of Corrections (CDC), which operates more than 100 facilities, including 33 prisons. CDC is the largest department in state government, with more than 43,000 employees -- 27,000 of them sworn peace officers. Also within YACA, the California Youth Authority operates 11 facilities for juvenile offenders, the Board of Prison Terms reviews parole applications for inmates serving indeterminate sentences and the Youthful Offender Parole Board determines the release date for Youth Authority inmates.(8)

Together, the state and local correctional agencies share responsibility for incarcerating offenders -- most of them felons -- as they move through the court process and serve their sentences.

As the crime rate has dropped through the 1990s, the total number of arrests also has declined gradually and steadily -- from 1.7 million in 1991 to 1.5 million in 1996. The number of felony arrests, however, has fluctuated from year to year, and overall is not trending downward.(9)

As displayed in the following chart, nearly 7 in 10 people arrested for felonies in California are convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor. Nearly 9 in 10 of those who are convicted serve time behind bars. While precise numbers are not kept, nearly four in 10 felony convictions are estimated to end with a prison term.(10)

An Enormous Caseload

The population of defendants and sanctioned criminals that are in state and county custody is growing and changing. A greater percentage of criminals are being incarcerated, and as a result the State has taken on a larger role in administering punishments. The incarceration trend, however, also has challenged local authorities, who are housing more felony defendants fighting criminal charges in court.

The combined caseload is enormous. The counties and the State process well over 1 million suspects and convicted criminals each year. At any one time, the agencies have within their jurisdiction more than 600,000 people -- about one third of those behind bars and the rest on probation or parole.(11)

Historically, counties have had primary responsibility for administering sanctions. For every adult arrested for a felony, two are arrested for misdemeanors. More than one-third of those who are arrested for felonies are ultimately charged with misdemeanors. Of those charged with felonies, the conviction many times is for misdemeanors. And even among felony convictions, the sentence has often been county jail rather than state prison. Combined, these factors generate a larger caseload for county correctional agencies than their state counterparts.

The State once encouraged counties to punish felons locally. In the 1970s, California operated a nationally acclaimed "probation subsidy" program that compensated counties to locally incarcerate or rehabilitate felons who otherwise would go to state prison.

Legally, the roles of the state and county agencies have not changed much over time. But as resources and sentencing policies have moved from community-based correctional programs to state incarceration, the dynamics of the inmate population have changed considerably. As the chart above shows, about 60 percent of all adults under court supervision -- that is, in jail or prison, on probation or parole -- are within the jurisdiction of the county. The remaining 40 percent are within the State's jurisdiction.

According to the state Department of Justice, from 1990 to 1995 the percentage of adults in California under court supervision was relatively flat -- increasing by just 1 percent. In other words, while more people had been convicted and sentenced for crimes, that increase generally kept pace with the State's overall population growth. But within that convicted population, significant changes have occurred.

The percentage of adults who were under county supervision dropped during those years by 10.7 percent -- primarily because fewer adults were serving time on probation. The rate of adults under state supervision, however, increased by 27.5 percent -- primarily because more felons were sentenced to prison. So while the percentage of the population under court supervision has stayed relatively the same, the percentage of the population that is incarcerated has increased steadily. And while the jail and prison populations have increased in real numbers, the State's share of the caseload has increased, as well.

California often is singled out for having the largest prison system in the nation. One out of every 13 persons in prison in America is in a California prison. And fluctuations in California's prison population are enough to sway the nation's statistics. The nation's prison population grew by 55,876 between 1995 and 1996. California was responsible for more than 12,000 of that increase.(12)

The incarcerate rate puts the prison population in the context of the overall residential population. The incarceration rate reveals that California's large prison population is partly due to the state's large residential population and partly due to a higher than average incarceration rate.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, California has the 10th highest incarceration rate in the nation.(13) California's incarceration rate, however, has grown faster than the average incarceration rate among the states.(14)

This increased emphasis on incarceration has reshaped county and state operations for processing and holding suspects, defendants and sentenced convicts.

At any one time, the Board of Corrections reports that some 2.6 million arrest warrants are unserved -- most of them misdemeanors -- because there is no place for those who would be jailed. In 1996, county jails logged more than 1.2 million bookings. That number does not include the increasing but uncounted number of suspects who are booked at city facilities, yet may end up in county jails or state prisons.

Of the 57 county jail systems, 24 counties (collectively responsible for 70 percent of jail inmates) have court-ordered population caps on at least one of their facilities. In 1996, more than 325,000 county jail inmates -- nearly 900 a day -- were released before completing their sentence or were released prior to coming to trial because jailers needed to make room for more serious inmates.(15)

County jails are housing more felons, more suspects awaiting trial and more inmates for a longer time. The Board of Corrections reports that 70 percent of jail inmates are awaiting trial on felony charges or have been convicted of felonies. Two- and three-strike defendants account for 11.4 percent of the jail population. Three-strike defendants stay an average of 205 days, compared to 53 days for other felony pretrial inmates. Historical data is unavailable, but officials say misdemeanants who once inhabited jails have been crowded out by felons.

Correspondingly, the average length of stay for inmates in county jails has increased -- from 15 days in 1986 to 21 days in 1996. While that statistic captures the trend, the numbers are driven by inmates at the extreme who spend two hundred or more days in jail serving longer terms or fighting second or third strike charges that were once plea bargained. In 1986, 47 percent of county jail inmates were awaiting trial. In 1996, 59 percent of county jail inmates were awaiting trial.

Similarly prisons are housing more inmates for a longer period of time. The average sentence -- before good time credits, which can cut a term in half -- increased from 41 months in 1991 to 53 months in 1997.(16)

The Physical Facilities: Population Equals Capacity

Most county jails and state prisons are holding far more inmates than they were designed to hold. For the most part those jails that are not under court-ordered caps continue to add more inmates, as does the state prison system. As a result -- despite unprecedented expansion of the jail and prison system -- the actual capacity of the facilities is often the same as the number of people behind bars.

County jails have grown from 44,000 beds in 1989 to more than 72,000 beds in 1997. County jails have state-rated capacities that technically they are required to comply with. But the counties routinely operate above that limit. Nearly half of the counties, and nearly all of the large ones, have court-ordered population caps. In many of those instances the court limits are higher than the state standards, and so become the operating norms. The average daily population in the county jails in 1996 was 6,000 more than the the state-rated capacity. And that is the average population. The jails hit a one-day all-time high in 1996 of 77,163.(17)

In addition to expanding in size, many counties have fortified jails that had been built for low-security inmates, but are now required to house high-security felony defendants awaiting trial.

Expansion of the state prison system has been even more dramatic. From 1965 to 1984, the State added little new capacity to its prison system. But beginning in the early 1980s, the State began a rapid construction program that over the last 15 years increased dramatically the number of cells. CDC's inmate population increased from 23,511 in June of 1980 to 154,000 in September of 1997. The growth was accommodated by building 21 new prisons -- most of them housing more than 4,000 inmates -- and by adding beds to some of the 12 previously existing prisons. Some 144,000 inmates are in these prisons.

In addition to traditional prisons, CDC houses inmates in several different kinds of facilities: Some 4,000 inmates are based at 38 fire camps, from which they are dispatched to fight wildland fires, construct conservation projects and assist in disaster response.

The department has contracts with county jails to house 800 inmates and 300 inmates are in mental hospitals.

Some 8,000 inmates are housed in 52 community correctional facilities -- everything from small work furlough programs to mini-prisons that house parole violators and other minimum security inmates. Some of the transitional facilities have long been part of the CDC inventory and have not been expanded as the prison population has increased. But most of the beds -- including some provided under contract with local governmentand some under contract with the nation's largest private prison companies -- have been added as part of the prison construction boom. Originally intended for parole violators, those community correctional facilities have increasingly been relied upon to house inmates who but for overcrowding would be in one of the department's prisons.

The community correctional programs, as anticipated in 1998 are as follows:



Community Correctional Beds

Program

Number of Beds

Re-entry Centers

(Work furlough)

1,221 beds

(31 private; 2 state facilities)

Prisoner Mother 94 beds (7 facilities)
Substance Abuse 45 beds (1 state-run facility)
Community Correctional Facilities 6,176 beds; 400 planned

(private and public contracts, including those in construction)

Restitution 105 beds (1 state-run facility)
Boot camps 64 beds (being phased out)
Total 8,105


Despite this build up, California still has more criminals than beds. A long-standing controversy has been how full is full. In characterizing its capacity, CDC traditionally referred to the design capacity of the facilities, which assumes a single inmate in a cell and single bunking in dormitories. By that definition, most of the new prisons are at nearly 200 percent capacity the day they open. And critics complained that the design capacity definition underutilized prisons and exaggerated the demand for additional facilities.

As a result, in 1995 CDC adopted a different measure, the Housing Overcrowding Capacity (HOC) standard. The HOC assumes two inmates in most cells, double bunking in dormitories and the conversion of day rooms and gymnasiums to dormitories. Still, the department considers a prison "overcrowded" if it exceeds the historical design capacity. And even the HOC does not represent the upper limit. Since CDC established the HOC standard, it has housed at least 10,000 more inmates than the standard would allow.(18)

The de facto definition of capacity has become the number of people the department says it can house at the absolute maximum, including some triple bunking of dormitories and other "emergency beds." The department now places that number at 178,000, with nearly 170,000 of those in CDC prisons and camps and the balance in a variety of community correctional programs. The department believes the prison population will reach that level in early 2000.

The emergency bed program shows the elasticity of the system. Prison officials, however, say there are significant consequences of severe overcrowding, including the heightened potential for rioting by inmates, and the potential for a court ruling requiring the State to release inmates before they have served their sentences.

So far, the State has not released inmates early because of overcrowding -- in part because of the extensive facility construction program and in part because of a commitment to find room for all felons sent to prison.

Similarly, county jails have struggled to stretch defined capacity to accommodate operational realities. Data collected by the Board of Corrections in 1997 showed a decrease in early releases and a further increase in the jail population, which the board's staff believes is an indicator that jail operators are finding additional ways to house more inmates. At the same time, the board staff believes that with hundreds of thousands of inmates released early each year, traditional facility planning has continued to underestimate the need for jail beds.

In short, operating jails and prisons above capacity has become the routine in California. More importantly, the expectation is for still more inmates, many of them repeat offenders. The table on the following page displays CDC's 33 major institutions and their population as of December 1997, when combined those facilities held 149,999 inmates.

CDC Institutions

Location

 Year Opened

Security Level

Population

San Quentin State Prison San Quentin 1852 I, II 5,841
Folsom State Prison Repressa 1880 I, II 3,838
Calif. Correctional Institution Tehachapi 1933 I, II, IV 5,846
Calif. Institution for Men Chino 1941 I 6,191
Correctional Training Facility Soledad 1946 I, II 7,022
Calif. Institution for Women Corona 1952 I, II, III, IV 1,815
Deuel Vocational Institution Tracy 1953 I, III 3,648
Calif. Men's Colony SLO 1954 I, II, III 6,711
Calif. Medical Facility Vacaville 1955 I, II, III 3,161
Calif. Rehabilitation Center Norco 1962 II 4,979
Calif. Correctional Center Susanville 1963 I, II, III 5,900
Sierra Conservation Center Jamestown 1965 I, II, III 6,191
Calif. State Prison, Solano Vacaville 1984 II, III 5,756
Calif. State Prison, Sacramento Repressa 1986 I, IV 3,163
Avenal State Prison Avenal 1987 II 5,716
Mule Creek State Prison Ione 1987 I, III, IV 3,616
R.. J. Donovan Correctional Facility San Diego 1987 I, III 4,646
Northern Calif. Women's Facility Stockton 1987 II, III 780
Calif. State Prison, Corcoran Corcoran 1988 I, III, IV, SHU 5,275
Chuckawalla Valley State Prison Blythe 1988 I, II 3,642
Pelican Bay State Prison Crescent City 1989 I, IV, SHU 3,776
Central Calif. Women's Facility Chowchilla 1990 I, II, III, IV 3,455
Wasco State Prison Wasco 1991 I, III 5,915
Calipatria State Prison Calipatria 1992 I, III, IV 3,963
Calif. State Prison, LA County Lancaster 1993 I, III, IV 4,227
North Kern State Prison Delano 1993 I, III 5,015
Centinela State Prison Imperial 1993 I, III 4,612
Ironwood State Prison Blythe 1994 I, III 4,543
Pleasant Valley State Prison Coalinga 1994 I, III 4,576
Valley State Prison for Women Chowchilla 1995 I, II, III, IV 3,318
High Desert State Prison Standish 1995 I, III, IV 4,115
Salinas Valley State Prison Soledad 1996 I, IV 4,129
Substance Abuse Treat. Facility Corcoran 1997 II, III, IV 1,947

Over Time: More Inmates, More Coming Back

Despite the reams of statistics, it is difficult to know with precision how many people are in the criminal justice system. But whatever the number, it is significantly more than the number of beds behind bars.

The county jails at any one moment hold an average of 72,000 inmates, who stay on average 21 days. While many individuals undoubtedly see the inside of a cell more than once over the course of a year, the number of people who spend at least one night on a bunk is clearly in the hundreds of thousands.

The turnover in the state prison system is not as great -- but still substantial. In the aggregate, the prison population is about 154,000 -- and increasing by nearly 10,000 inmates a year.

But CDC also is constantly releasing inmates and admitting new ones. Many of the inmates who are released violate the conditions of parole and are returned to custody. As a result, the same individual can be admitted more than once during a year, and released more than once during a year.

In fiscal year 1996-97, CDC admitted 132,581 inmates. Of those, nearly 49,000 were newly sentenced to prison by the court. The balance -- more than 82,000 inmates -- were parolees being returned to prison for having violated the conditions of their release or having been convicted of a new crime.(19)

That same fiscal year, CDC released 121,084 inmates. Slightly more than half of those were inmates being released on parole for the first time. Most of the remainder were inmates who had been released on parole, had violated parole and had been returned to custody.

The high numbers of failed parolees is not a new problem -- but it is an increasing one. In 1980, 10 percent of all parolees were returned to prison before their parole was completed. By 1985, nearly 30 percent of parolees were being returned to prison. By 1990, parole failures had increased to nearly 50 percent. And in 1996, 62 percent of parolees were returned to prison. This trend has serious consequences for public safety and adds signficantly to the costs of operating prisons.

In 47 other states, new court commitments make up a majority of the inmates admitted to prison, and in most states by a wide margin. In California, nearly two-thirds of the incoming inmates are parole violators, who serve an average of four months before being released again.(20)

The department has acknowledged that it has a "very rapidly revolving door." In a legislative briefing, the department asserted: "CDC increasingly functions like a county jail system, in addition to being a prison system."(21)

The high rate of parole violators raises two concerns:

Of all of the inmates released from prison -- both those who completed parole and those who violated parole, were re-incarcerated and ultimately released -- 56 percent are arrested and convicted of another crime within two years.(22)

Comparisons with other states is complicated by differences in data collection methods. But based on the available data, other reviewers, including the Blue Ribbon Commission on Inmate Population Management, have concluded that California's recidivism rate is among the highest in the nation.

So the State can proudly point to its high incarceration rate and low escape rate as positively protecting public safety. But to the degree that inmates released from California's prison system are more likely to commit another crime than their peers in other states, public safety is compromised.

The Bottom Line

The growth in prisons has required a significant commitment of public resources and with inmate populations still increasing, staying the course will require still more public money.

The direct costs of correctional programs need to be viewed in terms of the capital costs of building and repairing facilities, including the financing of those projects, and the operational costs. Over time, the costs of operating prisons quickly surpasses the costs of construction.

For example, the construction costs associated with housing a Level IV, high-security inmate is $63,478. The annual operational costs of housing that same inmate is $25,000.(23)

First the capital costs:

Over the last 15 years the State has spent more than $3 billion to expand and modernize county jails. About half of that sum was provided by $1.5 billion in bond measures approved by voters in 1981, 1984, 1986 and 1988. The construction program added more than 41,000 jail beds, nearly doubling the capacity.

Over the last 15 years the State has spent $5.2 billion to modernize old prisons and construct new ones. About half of that money was financed with General Obligation bonds approved by voters in ballot measures in 1981, 1984, 1986, 1988 and 1990. In November of 1990 voters rejected another prison bond measure. The State then turned to lease-purchase revenue bonds, which can be issued without voter approval, to finance the balance of the construction tab.(24)

In 1994 and 1995, CDC proposed new lease-purchase revenue bond legislation to finance additional prisons, but the proposals were rejected by the Legislature. In 1996, the department proposed construction of six new prisons, and again no action was taken.

The CDC master plan released in June 1996 concluded that 17 new prisons will be needed by the year 2006, when an additional 74,000 inmates will be in the system bringing the prison population to 240,000 inmates.

Systemwide, the State and local agencies are looking for $9.16 billion over the next 10 years: CDC estimates that $6.1 billion will be needed to renovate and expand the state prison system. The California Youth Authority expects to need $674 million to expand and renovate facilities. The Board of Corrections estimates that counties will need $2.4 billion to expand local jails -- and that would be to sustain the current level of overcrowding and early releases.(25)

The $9.16 billion sought by correctional agencies is just part of the $80 billion in capital projects that the Department of Finance estimates are needed by education, transportation and environmental protection programs. After considering all of the possible funding sources, the Department of Finance calculates that the State can only afford $52 billion in capital outlay over the next 10 years. It's conclusion: "The State will likely have to live with some level of imbalance."(26)

One fiscal consequence of operating overcrowded facilities is that they require renovation sooner than planned. In addition to new construction, CDC's five-year maintenance plan calls for $387 million in improvements to existing facilities between 1998 and 2003.(27)

As new facilities come on line, operational costs also increase. Between 1989 and 1994, the costs of operating county jails increased from $800 million a year to $2 billion a year. During that same period, the annual budget for the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency increased from $2.2 billion to $4 billion.(28)

The state correctional costs also have grown as a percentage of state expenditures -- from 4 percent in the 1985-86 fiscal year to 6.4 percent in 1997-98.(29) And as a percentage of the State General Fund, corrections has increased even more -- from 3 percent of the General Fund a decade ago to 7.6 percent in 1997-98.

In the 1997-98 budget, the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency received the largest increase of any program in the budget -- 11 percent. Total state spending, by comparison, increased by 4 percent from the year before.

Summary

The dramatic expansion of the State's jails and prisons has not kept pace with a growing inmate population. Part of the prison population growth can be attributed to the State's overall population growth. But the State also is incarcerating an increasing percentage of convicted criminals for longer terms. In addition, an increasing percentage of felons, once paroled, are returning to prison having failed to successfully reintegrate into society. The State has two options: to rethink how it houses and deals with criminals, or to redouble its financial commitment to building and operating more jails and prisons.

The Findings and Recommendations in this report provide a mechanism for the State to rethink how it houses and deals with criminals. One goal is to ensure that parolees are successfully reintegrated into society and not returned to prison.



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