Mendocino County District Attorney Dave Eyster is joining politically conservative prosecutors statewide in condemning pending plans by state prison authorities to permanently enact measures expanding the early release of California inmates for good behavior.
Eyster is actively engaged with a cadre of elected prosecutors who are engaged in a high-profile campaign to elect a new state Attorney General and thwart state prison plans by claiming that thousands of ‘violent offenders’ will be turned out on the streets, along with inmates who have serious criminal records of ‘two strikes’.
Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, a Republican-turned-independent who is running for state attorney general, is leading the charge. Schubert, who has been Sacramento County’s District Attorney since 2014, is the favorite of Eyster and conservative DA’s, law enforcement groups, and victims’ rights organizations, which say California is too soft on crime.
Eyster, Schubert, and other elected prosecutors contend the state is going too far in its bid to ease overcrowding during a pandemic, and now seeking to make some of the early release programs permanent.
Nowhere in their public criticism, however, do Eyster, Schubert, or their conservative counterparts address spiraling prison expenses that taxpayers face statewide and locally even in the face of declining crime rates.
It now costs state taxpayers a staggering $106,000 per year on average to house a single prisoner, according to the most recent update by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. The office’s latest report on incarceration costs and crime statistics was released in November 2021.
Local communities are not immune from rising prison costs. In Mendocino County, $25.4 million is spent annually to run the county jail or other detention facilities, more than any other public protection expense, according to current county budget figures. That includes state reimbursement in so-called realignment prison programs where some inmates are held locally to serve court-imposed jail terms.
Most of the rising costs at either the local or state level are associated with salaries and benefits for correction officers and inmate health care.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office underscored a dollar and cents debate about prison costs, and inmate release policies. Among the findings:
- The average cost of incarcerating an inmate in a California prison is now $106,000 per year.
- About three-quarters of these costs are for security and inmate health care.
- Since 2010-11, the average annual cost has increased by about $57,000 or about 117 percent. This includes an increase of $20,800 for security and $19,000 for inmate health care. Significant drivers of this increase in costs were employee compensation and the activation of a new health care facility. In addition, the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic also contributed to higher costs in 2021-22.
During the same period, the Legislative Analyst’s Office found that:
- California has experienced a decline in the property crime rate since it peaked in 1980 and in the violent crime rate since it peaked 1992. Between 1980 and 2020, the state’s overall crime rate declined by about 67 percent. This decline is similar to trends in crime patterns in the rest of the United States.
- In 2020, there were about one million crimes reported in California, most of which were property crimes. This represents a crime rate of about 2,600 crimes per 100,000 residents—a 6 percent decline relative to the 2019 rate.
- California’s property crime rate was 9 percent higher than the nationwide rate and its violent crime rate was 11 percent higher than the nationwide rate.
Over a 20-year period beginning in 1985, the Legislative Analyst’s Office found that the state prison population more than tripled from about 50,000 inmates in 1985 to a peak of 173,000 inmates in 2006. During the same period, while crime rates declined, there also was state implementation of “tougher sentencing laws and a prison construction boom that activated 20 state prisons.”
Then between 2006 and 2018, the prison population declined by 26 percent from about 173,000 to 128,000 inmates.
“The decline in the prison population is largely related to various changes in sentencing law. For example, the 2011 realignment shifted responsibility for housing and supervising some felons from the state to the counties. Proposition 47(2014) changed some crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, reducing both state and county correctional populations,” according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Still, some prosecutors continue to hammer at state prison policies.
In his most recent public attack on early release programs, Mendocino DA Eyster lambasted the state’s efforts to make permanent the ‘emergency’ provisions in place for the past year because of the Covid pandemic.
“Releasing inmates early who have committed atrocious crimes after only serving a fraction of their sentence threatens the safety of law-abiding citizens and is a hard slap in the face to crime victims who are still suffering,” wrote Eyster.
An example Eyster used is how a convict facing a 10-year state prison sentence could be released back to Mendocino County after having only served three years and four months of a local court-imposed sentence if the proposed state regulations are permanently adopted.
A year ago, Eyster joined Schubert and her supporters in filing a civil lawsuit challenging the use of the emergency process for certain categories of early prison releases.
Recently, however, a Sacramento Superior Court lifted a temporary ban and allowed California prison authorities to proceed with plans to allow earlier prison release dates for some repeat offenders.
Eyster and other prosecutors specifically attempted to block corrections officials from increasing good conduct credits for second-strike inmates serving time for nonviolent offenses who are housed at minimum-security prisons and camps. Their daily credits can now increase from half off their sentences to two-thirds off their sentences.
Prison officials say the latest court ruling now “clears the way for the department to implement regulations that incentivize incarcerated people to participate in positive rehabilitative activities and avoid negative behavior.”
The Legislative Analyst’s Report can be found at: https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost
As of 2018 (latest statistics) California has the highest murder rate of all 50 states and the lowest incarceration rate per 100,000 inhabitants. Do the math, examine the equation. We cannot afford to let these perpetrators out at any price. Eyster is correct in his endeavors.
Prison creates violent racists. It manufactures a class of non-citizens who are unemployable. This creates the need for more police and more prisons. Covid closed schools but not prisons.
Non violent crime should not involve prison. Work camps, public service, military duty would help more.
Never lock non violent offenders in with violent ones
Perhaps Mr. Koepf should do the math. CalMatters did: https://calmatters.org/explainers/california-crime-numbers/
Mr. Journalist Geniella. My source was USA today. In terms of math and CalMatters, you are undoubtedly agreeing that murders, rapists and child abusers should be let out of jail early, because the costs of thier incarceration is too expensive, a point of view, which your former boss, DA Eyster, does not agree with. Mr. Geniella, the cost of your math, along with your fellow let-them-out libs, is astronomical when it comes to the public’s protection and welfare.
Mr. Koepf, your wild accusations about support for the release of murderers, rapists, and child abusers is typical of your comments from the fringe. No one advocates that. How much it costs the public to incarcerate prisoners is a fair and reasonable question, especially when the figure has climbed to $106,000 per year per inmate. Pew Research found that even though the overall U.S. prison population total is on the decline, this nation incarcerates more people per 100,000 than any other in the world. What a distinction.
There’s no denying it: the California Legislature is in the pocket of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. The top ten correctional salaries last year were from $157,000. to $396,000. One regular correctional salary (over $100,000) with overtime was $292,000. Any ‘good journalist’ would have taken this into consideration before jumping on the let-them-out, goody-two-shoes band wagon to send gang-bangers and murderers back to our streets where they will keep doing exactly what they did before. Mr. Geniella, amidst the warm fuzzy interior of the prisoners-are-victims, cluster cabal, you have not done your journalistic homework. The fringe beckons you to consider the entire picture before you put your chubby fingers to the keyboard to cheer evil back to our streets. In a sense, get off your intellectual posterior and wake the devil up! There may be hundreds of ways to cut down prison expenses. Curtailing sex changes in California’s prison population might be a place to start. According to CNN, at least $140,000 out of pocket. Common sense from the fringe.
Mr. Koepf, blah, blah, blah. Your insulting demeanor leaves no room for honest discussion. Go back to cuddling with your fringe friends.
Blah, blah, blah? That’s your idea of an “honest discussion?’ You were given an hypothesis of why the cost of incarceration is so high. Prison salaries, not the prisoners themselves. Blah, blah, blah is that all you can offer as a rational response?
Well, I must add this, since a reasonable amount of time has transpired for you to respond, Mr. journalist- without-an-answer Geniella. There are physical cowards and mental cowards. The first are often deserving of respect.