California Needs Systemic Prison Reform, Not Exporting Prisoners Out of State

By Dr. B. Cayenne Bird

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger apparently thinks that sending people out of state away from their court cases and families is a right way to create more beds in prisons. This desperate plan is more evidence of the total disregard that this Governor has for human life and due process.

Moving prisoners out of state would be a wrong move because it treats people as if they were no better than livestock and it denies due process. Not that some people might not be desperate to get out of California's blood houses.

I can think of two reasons why the Governor would float such a callous and wrong-headed idea as contracting 10,000 people to private prisons out of state. One is so that he doesn't have to initiate any real reform and two, thereby alienate his Republican base whose Holy Grail is punishing instead of preventing and healing the actual causes of crime. Moving people is not a reform. Their cases and witnesses are here, and due process must be respected, cherished, and preserved.

Moving inmates who have little ones would punish the children unnecessarily and would not impact the gang culture, as gangs are everywhere in the country. Moving "gang" members to other parts of the country is simply a way to expand that culture. And who could ever trust the screening process to know who was moved?

The idea of moving people in prison away from their legal cases and families is not only callous but it's ridiculous. However, if some prisoners want to waive their rights to due process or want to go out of state to be near their families, that would be fine -- but not if those prisoners are terminally or mentally ill, which would make them incompetent to sign their lives, family members, and court cases away.

Since there is obviously a lack of depth and creativity on actual prison reform amongst the Republican lawmakers in particular and even some of the Democrats that will bring our society to a better place, I've penned this opinion piece. It has actually been voiced many times before with the help of thousands of prisoners’ families, many of whom are doctors, teachers, nurses, business owners, social workers and even attorneys and journalists -- in other words, intelligent, professional people who are living the nightmare of injustice by having a loved one incarcerated in California. They know better than any aging action hero or cartoon character making life and death decisions with people's lives what is needed, as they are the victims of these crimes against humanity brought on by all this political blustering and capitalization off human suffering that has brought us to this prison crisis.

Before any semblance of reform can be achieved in the overcrowded, overwhelmed, under-functioning, understaffed, unaccountable, out-of-control, out-of-step, and in-debt California prison system, two things need to happen: Emergencies need immediate attention, and a metaphorical house cleaning needs to take place.

Of course no mention of the huge numbers of illegal aliens filling the prisons, and how deporting these criminal thugs to serve time in their home countries prisons might help overcrowding. Just a bunch of psuedo-psycho babble of how prisons are so terrible to the inmates and how anyone who thinks all criminals should be incarcerated for their crimes are murderous hate mongers, and those who run the prison system are guilty of crimes against humanity.