I'm not sure what the best way is to go about posting this, and as I paste this up here I am fairly certain it falls into the "worst ways to do this" category. Here it goes anyway:
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David Gable
State and Local Government
Paper #1
3-2-11
Are They All Political Prisoners?:
An Analysis of the CCPOA’s Role in California Politics
James is a shy, awkward looking kid. He looks as though he would be out of place on a sports team or even just hanging with friends in the cafeteria. This makes him look even stranger in a blue jumpsuit sitting beside 3 other inmates on their way to court. If he looks worried, he should, because today he will find out if he will be charged as a 14-year-old and be looking at 2 months in a juvenile detention facility, or if he will be charged as an adult and not come out until he most certainly is one.
The San Mateo Juvenile Hall (where James has been held facing charges in San Mateo, California) is not filled with political activists. Many of the employees no doubt vote, and perhaps even some of the inmates do (upon their release and subsequent completion of probation). However, it and all the correctional facilities across the state are indirectly responsible for many of the laws under which inmates such as James are currently being prosecuted. The way in which they accomplish this, is the topic of this paper.
In one acronym, the method by which facilities like San Mateo Juvenile Hall are able to retain funding, as well as strong benefits to their employees, are because those employees are by and large all members of one organization: the CCPOA. The CCPOA is the California Correctional Peace Officer’s Association, and although it began in the late 50’s, it didn’t become a political powerhouse until the 80’s when that all changed. “The 1980’s…marked a fundamental shift in the union’s political reach when Don Novey assumed control of the organization…the Youth Authority supervisors, parole officers, and prison guards were all consolidated under one organizational umbrella…membership soared as a result,” (CCPOA Berkeley, pg. 11). The timing was perfect because just as the CCPOA began launching huge PR campaigns, crime in California began to increase and people were hungry for solutions: the tough-on-crime political platform rose to prominence.
“Politicians began advocating more and more tough-on-crime laws and soon found themselves in the good graces of the CCPOA. The surge of arrests ended up benefitting the CCPOA’s bottom-line. “Not surprisingly, the escalating inmate population and prison costs have occurred lockstep with the CCPOA’s swelling ranks, budget, and political power….average guard salaries have skyrocketed…[and] the state corrections budget has experienced a corresponding explosion,” (Prison Guard Clout, pg. 1). All the while, laws such as three-strikes found the CCPOA a very powerful supporter indeed, and might not have passed so easily had it not been for its influence. “The CCPOA was one of Proposition 184’s [commonly referred to as the three-strikes law] earliest backers and biggest financial boosters,” (CCPOA Berkeley, pg. 14). Why wouldn’t they be?; after-all, life sentences are one way to ensure job security even in economically tough times.
Recently, a California state appeals court upheld the 25-year-to-life sentence of a homeless ex-convict who had attempted to pry open the kitchen door of a church, where he'd been fed in the past, and steal some food.“It's really amazing how many of these horror stories there are,” says Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “These cases are not the exception, but the rule,” (Prison Reform, pg. 6). While stories like this did not get much press and the stories of extremely violent offenders being sentenced under the law did. Due partly to this, the public’s opinion of the draconian laws continued to be largely positive.
California continued to enact new laws (as did many other states) to address their growing crime problem. “Indeed, the legislature embarked on a criminal-law production frenzy, passing more than 100, and sometimes as many as 200, pieces of new legislation each year since 1988-up from the former output of 20-25 pieces, which included routine amendments of existing statutes (Greenwood et al. 1994),” ( Golden Gulag, pg. 106). This created such a backlog that is was impossible to clear the legislative calendar by the end of each term. Criminal Law subcommittees, which fell under the judiciary committees in both houses, now dealt exclusively with criminal legislation. All these new laws produced a radical shift in the racial and ethnic makeup of the prison population, so that the makeup is now disproportionally minorities.
There are also other trends we are seeing in the growing inmate population. “Most prisoners are modestly educated men in the prime of life: 88 percent are between 19 and 44 years old. Less than 45 percent graduated from high school or read at the ninth grade level; one in four is functionally illiterate,” (Golden Gulag, pg. 105). Throughout all of these developments, the CCPOA has been largely politically active in pressing its agenda both at the more local levels by funding district attorney races (“between 1996 and 2000, the CCPOA gave at least $108,000 to local district attorneys,” -CCPOA Berkeley, pg. 12) and also funding state-wide elections and ballot measures. “The CCPOA has lavishly supported its political allies in the legislature. Senate Majority Leader John Burton…who sponsored a bill that lifted correctional officer salaries as high as $73,000 received $200,000 from the CCPOA,” (CCPOA Berkeley, pg. 12).
Opponents of this movement across the country to create harsher laws, point out a key contradiction. Everyone was saying that we needed these new laws in order to control violence. However, these news laws resulted in a change in the type of offenses for which prisoners were being incarcerated . Previously there were far more violent offenses, but we see the number of nonviolent offenses proving to be the majority. “The new laws have clogged the nation's jails and prisons with inmates who could probably be better dealt with through supervised release and access to drug treatment. -says Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums,” (Prison-Building Boom, pg. 15 ). The argument that drug offenders are also the ones committing violent crimes also seems to be false. “About 74 percent of drug-offender inmates had no history of violence, according to The Sentencing Project,” (Prison Reform, pg. 6).
Despite the statistics which clearly show the ineffectiveness of the tough-on-crime policies the CCPOA has pushed for years, and which California has largely adopted, it has become extremely difficult for a politician in California to come out in support of anything else. Reducing the three strikes law and placing more emphasis on prevention and rehabilitation to reduce the prison/jail population are objectively sound policy proposals, however this goal of prisoner reduction directly contradicts the very real goals of the CCPOA in preserving the pay and working benefits of its members. The CCPOA is a well-oiled political machine which is extremely capable when it comes to exploiting voter fears of crime and using its own pocketbooks to secure political ends beneficial to itself.
All of this is as true about the CCPOA, however, as it is about many other lobbying organizations. The CCPOA is not an inherently sinister organization, it is simply performing with incredible efficacy the goals it was created to do in the first place: to look out for the interests of its members. Whether the CCPOA because of its sheer size and power, has undue influence when it comes to enacting sensible prison reforms will likely depend on your point of view regarding the very purpose of California’s correctional system and what you believe to be “sensible reform”. However one thing is for certain, as long as the CCPOA continues to have a strong presence in California politics, James’ bus-ride won’t be any less terrifying.
Works Cited:
California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Institute of Governmental Studies, U.C. Berkely. 2005. www.igs.berkeley.edu/library
Martin, Mark, and Podger, Pamela. Prison Guards Clout Difficult to Challenge. San Francisco Chronicle. Feb 2, 2004.
Katel, Peter. "Prison Reform". The CQ Researcher. Volume 17, Number 13. April 6, 2007
“Prison-Building Boom”. The CQ Researcher . Volume 9, Number 35. September 17, 1999.
Wilson Gilmore, Ruth. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. University of California Press. 2007.
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