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THE FEAR FACTOR by Steven King Ainsworth

Voters beware - do not go for the okey dokey again. I suggest that there are no law and order issues left for Lundgren to scare you with. The Duke and mean ol' xenophobic Pete saw to that in the past sixteen years. Think about it.

You now have close to, if not over, a quarter of a million people under some form of judicial restraint in California today - either on probation, in jail, on parole or in prison. You have had four executions and there are 470+ men and women on death row today, waiting for the Big Jab.

You have destroyed your Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, as well as made a mockery of your Sixth Amendment, and reduced your 14th Amendment rights to due process to practically nil. You have allowed Lundgren and his ilk to shred your right to the writ of habeas corpus and acquiesced to the politicization of your judiciary, all in the name of law and order.

Your thirty-three prisons are operating over 180% of their designed capacity and costing you millions of dollars in salaries and overtime pay. You are paying your prison guards more than your schoolteachers, which alone speaks volumes about your priorities. The guards union has become the most powerful lobbying force in your capital, setting the legislative agenda to their special interests and at the cost of yours. A union whose members openly brag about buying the Governor on the Internet; members who have taken the political rhetoric of Duke, Pete, et al to be tough on crime, as permission to commit mayhem and murder on the job. Crimes which Lundgren has refused to prosecute.

You are spending more money to imprison your children than you are to educate them. You went for "3 Strikes" and "10-20-Life", and other sentencing laws which will guarantee that you will be supporting a vast correctional/industrial complex well into the 21st Century, when your multi-billion dollar prison system will begin to resemble more of a hospice for the aging and dying than places of correction.

Oh sure, by legislative and judicial fiat, and the passage of time, a few death cases will reach maturity in 1998 and Lundgren will come down to the Bastille by the Bay (San Quentin), forget he's pro-life, beat his chest and tell you that it was he that brought the coming night's sacrifice to the Goddess of Justice to culmination. He'll smile and glad-hand a few of his cohorts, while some human being is given the Big Jab under the perverse eyes of a privileged few. Then he will use the cadaver of the executed and tell you that you are much safer now, having played your role in killing one of your fellow humans, telling you your children will learn from this example.

The issue in '98 in not crime. The big issue is education from pre-school to university level. The issue is your infrastructure: your schools, public buildings, roads, highways, parks, beaches, levees and mass transit. Your environment and health. The issue is hunger and poverty and the gulf between the poor and rich. The issue is not affirmative action, but affirmative expenditure! You tax money spent in the best interest of all and not in the special interest of a few.

AND THE REAL ISSUES by Charla Greene

To really think about the concept that your tax money should be spent in the best interest of all, consider these figures:

• It costs on the average of two million dollars for the initial two-phase capital trial that concentrates on killing one person. That is in comparison to $900,000 to house someone in San Quentin for 40 years. This initial expense does not include any following appeals work.
• Of approximately 3,000 homicides per year in California, only around 300 are considered for the death penalty, which has the two-phase, doubly expensive capital trial. Of those 300, $2,000,000 trials, around 30 result in a death sentence, meaning that the other 270 expensive trials end up in a conviction that could have been achieved at a much lower cost to the taxpayer if the death penalty were not an option.

To consider where our money could go to build a better society we must also look at the high cost of prisons and what could be done with less expensive and less destructive alternatives:

* Eighty percent of incarcerated men and women (1.4 million) have had their lives and criminal histories "shaped" by substance abuse. In a Columbia University study it was found that inmates receiving a well-designed prison-based drug treatment program were 70% less likely to rearrest in the first six months. Rand Corporation studies have shown treatment seven times more effective, dollar for dollar, than the traditional police/jail pattern of "justice". The cost of jailing an addict is five times the amount of educating a child in K-12 school. The annual cost of jail is $26,000; the annual cost of treatment ranges from $1,800 for out patient programs, to $6,800 for long-term hospitalization. Drug abuser involvement in sales, prostitution and theft decreases three-fold if they receive treatment. (1) So why does the public support a policy that concentrates on jailing for drug offenses, which is so much more expensive for the taxpayer and then doesn't reduce drug use and it's subsequent violence in society?

* Fifty percent inmates do not have level 6th grade reading skills, another 25% are not able to handle 12th grade level work. If literary skills were developed in prison, it could make the prison experience a true turning point in many lives, starting them on a new, law-abiding path with new survival skills. This, combined with drug treatment, gives the ex-offender a better chance to stay off drugs and out of jail.

* Eighty percent of women prisoners are convicted for non-violent, economic crimes. An almost equally high percentage of women prisoners are mothers. When mothers are incarcerated it has a more destructive impact on the family unit. Ninety percent of the children of male prisoners are being cared for by their mothers, only 25% of children of incarcerated mothers are being cared for my their fathers. (2) That means more children in the foster care system, and potentially more children on the streets, all of that equates to more expenses for the taxpayer. It would be much more cost effective to stop the destruction of the family unit in the first place by using alternative methods of restriction in payment for the crime. What is proven by putting a woman in a Maximum 4 prison for writing a bad check, and separating her from her children for a couple years? A more constructive sentence would be to a community-based program that provides job training, parenting classes, drug rehabilitation if necessary and counseling for domestic violence, and also provides an atmosphere where mothers and children would be together and be able to strengthen their bonds in order to better insure the children a future free of the anti-social behavior that is a result of ripping the family apart.

* Family ties can reduce crime and save tax dollars. As we wonder how to stop the kids from gang violence, and have politicians promoting insanely draconian laws because of the resulting deaths, have we considered the simple step of doing our utmost to keep families together? By overhauling a prison system that presently exacerbates the problem and replacing it with one that is designed to strengthen the family unit, we are rewarded with less dysfunctional mothers, less repeat prison sentences, less angry kids, less violence, and less cost to the taxpayer in the long run. Imagine working for the good of future generations instead of the destruction of them?

All the politicians should be honest about this when they start manipulating with their "get tough on crime" rhetoric, which does nothing to solve the problems and only drains the funds that could be going for the real issues: schools, highways, beaches, libraries, etc.

(1) The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, March 23, 1998
(2) Chicago Legal Aid for Incarcerated Mothers: www.c-l-a-i-m.org

Send Email to Charla Greene at Welcome to Hell

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