"Aging inmates add strain on state prisons," said the headline in last Sunday's Reporter. It was affixed to an Associated Press report detailing how the average age of California prisoners is climbing, putting more pressure on the broken prison health care system.
But it wasn't prison health care that captured the attention of The Reporter's editorial board, or the fact that the writer highlighted the problem by focusing on a Vacaville prison. It was a single paragraph describing why Louis Rodriguez - a 66-year-old inmate struggling through the final stages of liver cancer at the California Medical Facility - is even in prison.
"He is serving a life sentence after being convicted of a 'third strike' for stealing candy and cheese from a Los Angeles County grocery store," author Don Thompson wrote. "The conviction in 2000 followed another petty theft and a string of robberies nearly 30 years ago."
A life sentence for petty theft? And it's costing taxpayers $98,000 to $138,000 a year to incarcerate sick inmates such as Mr. Rodriguez - more than twice to lock up a healthy prisoner.
Is this really what California voters had in mind when they approved Three Strikes 14 years ago?
The law of unintended consequences has caught up with California. The state budget and the prison system are broken, and federal judges are now taking charge of the latter. ...
A bare majority of inmates may well be serving time for violent crimes, but that leaves a substantial number who are incarcerated for nonviolent felonies. A California Legislative Analysts' report from a few years ago showed that at the end of 2004, there were 5,130 second- and third-strike inmates serving long prison sentences for merely possessing a controlled substance. Another 2,363 were imprisoned for "petty theft with a prior."
California can't afford this. And since our Legislature and governor aren't willing to tackle sentencing reform, it's going to be up to voters to study those ballot measure carefully this fall, with an eye toward avoiding more unintended consequences.
This editorial first appeared in the Vacaville Recorder last week.
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