On Aug. 4, a panel of federal judges ordered the state of California to reduce its prison population by 40,000 within two years. The panel cited a grossly insufficient prison medical and mental health care system as the reason for the order. (New York Times, Aug. 4)
|
It is no secret that the state of California faces the worst prison overcrowding in the nation. There are about 170,000 inmates locked up in 33 state prisons. (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) The system is at 170 percent of capacity. Overcrowding is so bad that as of 2008 there were about 15,000 prisoners being housed in emergency beds in converted classrooms and gymnasiums. (Washington Post, May 5, 2008)
The dilapidated prison health care system causes the avoidable death of one inmate a week and prisoners with severe mental health issues are routinely left untreated.
While the inhumane conditions are nothing new, the scale of the crisis is. Faced with a budget crisis, state legislators are desperately seeking ways to cuts costs and save face.
While progressives and revolutionaries ought to cheer any move that chips away at the racist prison system, proposed cuts would have dire effects for thousands of prisoners. For example, 8,500 of the 37,000 total inmates slated to be “released” are undocumented workers who would merely be turned over to federal authorities for deportation.
It is also not clear how much of the planned prison budget cuts will further reduce the few services that are presently offered to prisoners.
For example, Senator Dennis Hollingsworth (R Murrita) suggested that the key to solving the prison crisis was to cut the “Cadillac health care in our prisons.” Despite overwhelming evidence that the prison health care system is entirely inadequate, Senator Hollingsworth is not alone in the desire to cut prison health care even further.
Other legislatures hold that the complete privatization of prisons is the key to reducing state spending. Further privatization would only increase the prison population while worsening conditions—all in order to increase profits for the private corporations running correction and detention facilities.
Shutdown the prisons
One in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison and one in every 18 males is either incarcerated or on probation or parole. The United States has the largest prison population in the world. An inherently racist system in an inherently racist society, 16 percent of Black males go to prison sometime in their life compared to 2 percent of white males. (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics)
Prisons are in reality warehouses for the masses of unemployed, underemployed and impoverished workers, especially so for oppressed communities. The crimes that the vast majority of workers are jailed for are the direct result of the capitalist system, which doesn’t prioritize human needs.
Prisons are institutions used by the capitalist class to divide workers and suppress and marginalize resistance especially in the poorest communities, so that an ever-increasing flow of profits can be extracted from what workers produce as a class.
The debate in the state legislature over how many prisoners to release and the size of the prison budget cuts doesn’t question the need for prisons themselves.
Workers should wholeheartedly struggle for the release of prisoners, prison system budget cuts, improvements in the living conditions for prisoners and the end of the racist death penalty.
The reality is that neither party is proposing substantial reform, much less any badly needed changes in the conditions for our sisters and brothers behind bars. One very workable solution to the prison system crisis—though it would never enter into the capitalist-controlled debate on prison conditions—would be to immediately shut the prisons down and guarantee a job and quality education for every worker.
