As I tend to mention (all too often?), I've spent time in jail. Six months. Not fun, but not always horrific either. What was always horrific? The health care - or lack thereof - on the inside.
While I was locked up - for only six months!! - one woman died at my facility (FPC Alderson) because while she was transferred through the prison system, the paperwork for her heart medication was not. When she complained of chest pain, the guards called her a liar. It was their default response to any inmate health complaint. Another of my friends had breast cancer that was going almost completely untreated. Another broke her arm in a compound fracture (that kind where the bone is literally sticking out) and because it was a Friday evening, she was told to suck it up and wait until Monday, when an extra shift would be on to take her to the hospital. We had one doctor for 1,000 women, and I'm quite sure absolutely no one was getting any kind of real substance abuse treatment while incarcerated.
California imprisons 170,000 people in prisons that were built for 100,000. That in and of itself is unconscionable, but what makes it worse is that there is no real health care - physical or mental - available to these folks, a great number of whom are nonviolent drug law offenders.
Up to 80 percent of those 170,000 people locked up in California have drug problems, of some sort. I'm not going to advocate for the state defining what problems folks do or do not have, or extol the virtues of mandated treatment. But personally, I'd prefer therapy, even bad therapy, to jail.
Regardless, that's a lot of folks in California who might benefit from treatment instead of incarceration.
Proposition 5 would offer that - diverting funding from the prison system to treatment for young people and other nonviolent drug law offenders. It would also cut state spending by $2.5 billion - by rendering groundless plans to build more prisons. Guess who doesn't want to see funding diverted away from their pockets?
The prison industrial complex is a formidable foe. And it's putting forth a deceptively respectable face: the California Correction Peace Officers Association (CCPOA - the prison guards union). These guys are a union. Unions are good, right? Wrong. At least, wrong here.
The California guards make
40 percent more than their most well-paid counterparts in ten neighboring or similarly-sized states - a base salary of almost $75 thousand. And more than legislators. More than a lot of folks. What do you want to bet it's more than teachers?
The prison industry is acting not in the interest of Californians or working people. It's dumped $2 million into the No on Prop. 5 campaign, airing TV ads that outright lie about what the proposition would do. You can see
our response here, and please, share the link! Tell everyone you can think of to help shut this industry down - we've waited too long for prison reform, in California and around the country. Join us in making real change on November 4.
Vote Yes on 5!
Posted by Vera Leone