Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger apparently thinks that sending people out of state away from their court cases and families is a right way to create more beds in prisons. This desperate plan is more evidence of the total disregard that this Governor has for human life and due process. 

Moving prisoners out of state would be a wrong move because it treats people as if they were no better than livestock and it denies due process. Not that some people might not be desperate to get out of California's blood houses.

I can think of two reasons why the Governor would float such a callous and wrong-headed idea as contracting 10,000 people to private prisons out of state. One is so that he doesn't have to initiate any real reform and two, thereby alienate his Republican base whose Holy Grail is punishing instead of preventing and healing the actual causes of crime. Moving people is not a reform. Their cases and witnesses are here, and due process must be respected, cherished, and preserved. 

Moving inmates who have little ones would punish the children unnecessarily and would not impact the gang culture, as gangs are everywhere in the country. Moving "gang" members to other parts of the country is simply a way to expand that culture. And who could ever trust the screening process to know who was moved? 

The idea of moving people in prison away from their legal cases and families is not only callous but it's ridiculous. However, if some prisoners want to waive their rights to due process or want to go out of state to be near their families, that would be fine -- but not if those prisoners are terminally or mentally ill, which would make them incompetent to sign their lives, family members, and court cases away. 

Since there is obviously a lack of depth and creativity on actual prison reform amongst the Republican lawmakers in particular and even some of the Democrats that will bring our society to a better place, I've penned this opinion piece. It has actually been voiced many times before with the help of thousands of prisoners’ families, many of whom are doctors, teachers, nurses, business owners, social workers and even attorneys and journalists -- in other words, intelligent, professional people who are living the nightmare of injustice by having a loved one incarcerated in California. They know better than any aging action hero or cartoon character making life and death decisions with people's lives what is needed, as they are the victims of these crimes against humanity brought on by all this political blustering and capitalization off human suffering that has brought us to this prison crisis.

Before any semblance of reform can be achieved in the overcrowded, overwhelmed, under-functioning, understaffed, unaccountable, out-of-control, out-of-step, and in-debt California prison system, two things need to happen: Emergencies need immediate attention, and a metaphorical house cleaning needs to take place. 

Emergencies Must Be the First Priority Until Actual Reforms Which are Really Going to be Effective Are Agreed Upon

Families of ill or injured prisoners still have no place to go for help or information when they have concerns about what has happened to their loved ones. This heartless lack of common decency and accountability has resulting in countless cases of preventable illness, injury, and ultimately death -- followed by wrongful death lawsuits. To lower the mounting preventable death toll, somebody needs to put someone in charge of responding to inmates and their families in preventable emergencies. In this declared emergency, creating contact personnel for families in need of information and help should have been the first order of business. Yet it still hasn't been done!

Also, as part of the current emergency, the Governor needs to sign the media access bill. I know of at least four young men who were found dead by hanging in one month alone. Suicide is a form of medical neglect. If there is nothing to hide, the Governor should honor the First Amendment of the Constitution and sign it.

Cleaning Up the Big Houses

As for cleaning house, a reasoned, well-planned release of certain classes of inmates is not only the quickest way to ease overcrowding, it will also serve to right some wrongs. It is wrong to sentence non-violent people, especially women, to state prisons hundreds of miles from their children for low-level crimes. It is wrong to subject the mentally ill to prison regimentation they cannot follow, harsh treatment by insensitive guards, threats and a wide range of abuses by violent inmates. It is wrong to keep frail elderly inmates constrained, often in isolation, when they are no longer any possible threat to society. It is wrong to keep the seriously ill in prison, again often in isolation or without any way for their families to visit them, even in their final days.

Once the big house is cleaned of these wrongs, there will be greater opportunity to start the kind of reforms that will begin to heal a system, so broken, so dysfunctional, so paralyzed that in spite of good reform ideas having been presented over many years, little if anything has actually been accomplished. 

Release the terminally ill and frail elderly 

Taxpayers do not wish to pay to imprison sick people who are no longer a danger to society. Those who are dying often have families who are willing to care for them. Some of this expense can be born by federal programs instead of the State if the inmates are released. Prisons aren't hospitals and prison guards aren't nurses. Prisons are no place for the ill because punishing those who are sick doesn't serve the public safety in any manner whatsoever. This is beyond cruel and unusual punishment to lock people in cages knowing that medical care cannot be delivered

These emergency and house-cleaning reforms alone could result in about 40,000 beds getting freed up without the expensive price tag that farming punishment out to other states would incur of our badly needed resources.

Conclusion

Reforms that might be categorized as repair and maintenance steps involving the entire system, arrest through parole are detailed in columns I have penned at American Chronicle.

With some organizing work we can put take the people who voted against SB1547 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/05-06/bill/sen/sb_1501-1550/sb_1547_bill_20060821_amended_asm.pdf by Romero last year out of power, including the cowards who didn't show up to vote for it. Politicians need to realize that the days of ignorance and apathy amongst the oppressed are over. The Republican politicians have been doing lockstep voting against every front end reform bill proposed for more than a decade. On important reforms, a 2/3 vote is required which is how they've blocked revision of the ineffective and inhumane Three Strikes Law. 

Very few citizens can be seen in attendance at these vital hearings or speaking up during public comment or people would have know long ago that it is the Republicans who keep us in this primitive mindset of vengeance-based justice. We need to kick the bums out of office, demonstrate in mass beneath their windows, and name the names of everyone who is callous in daily letters to editors. It's time to get smart on crime! If you would like to help me and thousands of voters who have been dedicated to reform for the past eight years with this important work please email me at rightor1@yahoo.com.

Dr. B. Cayenne Bird is an ordained minister and a 37-year veteran op-ed journalist and publisher. She volunteers her time as founder and director of United for No Injustice, Oppression or Neglect (UNION). The UNION is active in prison reform and criminal justice issues. She is a mother and grandmother and focuses on human rights and restorative justice. She publishes a daily online newsletter to subscribers teaching them how to become activists for prison reform.