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CALIFORNIA

In summer 2005, national media outlets were declaring that the “California Prison Boom Ends, Signaling a Shift in Priorities” (Christian Science Monitor, June 20, 2005.), a declaration that for the first time in decades, the state had neither any prisons under construction nor any plans to build new ones.  Coming after a 20 year period in which California had built 22 prisons, as compared to 12 in the previous 132 years, the slowdown in prison construction seemed highly significant – attributed by many to the tremendous cost of corrections, the forced cuts in other state expenditures as a result, and a renewed emphasis on rehabilitation.

Yet only six months later, Governor Schwarzenegger had proposed that the state borrow another $7.2 billion over the next 5 years to build more prisons and jails.  In particular, his plan called for the state to build 2 new prisons and 90,000 new jail cells, financed by state bonds as well as new borrowing by local counties.  Instead of a path of downsizing, reform and cost-savings, a massive expenditure of state and county funds was back on the table, marking another huge increase in the number of people incarcerated in the state of California – with no apparent justification aside from past patterns of growth. 

While the proposal was rejected by state legislators in the 2006 budget, it effectively ended the notion that the growth of corrections in California was firmly over, and instead indicated that expansion might in the future come not in the form of large state prisons, but through the expansion of local jails.   The proposal as of March 2006 to float a bond measure of $500 million to expand the Los Angeles County Jail is just one example, as counties throughout the state discuss plans to expand their local jail systems.   Once again, the state of California is poised to act as a leader in setting a national trend – though this time not one of supposed reform and cost-savings, but of the expansion of local jails, with counties picking up the massive costs of their construction.