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Privatize the Prison Industry Authority (PIA) as an independent, nonprofit, tax-exempt organization. Focus PIA on providing job training and other services aimed at preventing second-strike offenders from coming back to state prison with 25-years-to-life third-strike sentences. Also, enact other changes to restructure PIA management, improve fiscal accountability, do away with protected markets, establish clear rules for competition, allow for new private partnerships, and measure mission performance.
Following a number of years of poor financial performance, the PIA has improved, but the state continues to receive a poor return on its more than $91 million contribution in buildings and equipment for the program. The PIA's progress has been hampered by an ever-shifting and muddled mission, constraints on inmate productivity, governmental constraints such as the state's personnel system, and a weak internal governance structure.
Please see Reforming the Prison Industry Authority, April 1996.
Yvonne Choong: 445-4660
Enact legislation to modify the process by which parole consideration dates are established for Youth Authority wards with less serious offenses. Specifically, the process should be modified to permit counties to have a greater say in the length of stay of wards that they send to the Youth Authority.
When a young offender is accepted by the Youth Authority as a new admission, he becomes a ward of the department, and all decisions regarding length of stay, parole, and parole revocation are at the sole discretion of the Youthful Offender Parole Board (YOPB). Current law also requires counties to pay a fee to the state for each offender they send to the Youth Authority. Counties pay significantly higher fees for wards sent to the Youth Authority for less serious offenses (YOPB categories V through VII) than serious offenses. Because the counties pay for a large share of the costs of these less serious wards, the counties should have a role in determining the optimal length of stay for the wards, rather than leaving the decision solely to the YOPB. There are several options for how this could be accomplished.
Please see our 1999-00 Analysis, page D-105.
Tracy Kenny: 445-4660
Enact legislation to periodically adjust the fees charged to counties in order to account for the effects of inflation.
The basic fees charged to counties for young offenders committed to the Youth Authority were increased in 1996 from $25 per ward per month (the level set in 1961) to $150 per ward per month. The increase accounted for the effects of inflation over 35 years. The new fees should similarly be adjusted at least every three years in the future to account for inflation in order to protect the financial interests of the state and ensure that the counties are not subject to such a radical upward adjustment as was the case in 1996.
Please see our 1999-00 Analysis, page D-106.
Tracy Kenny: 445-4660
Repeal 1994 legislation which established a program to transfer state prison inmates back to the foreign countries from which they originated.
The program has not been cost-effective. At considerable expense, the Department of Corrections has notified tens of thousands of inmates per year of their opportunity to apply to finish out their prison terms in their home countries. However, each year only a handful of offenders who apply have actually been transferred from state custody through the actions of the Board of Prison Terms.
Please see our 1997-98 Analysis, page D-110.
Yvonne Choong: 445-4660
Enact an excise tax on the retail sale of the precursor chemicals that are used in the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine. Use the revenues generated from such a tax (probably in the millions of dollars annually) to defray the state's costs for enforcement and cleanup of clandestine methamphetamine laboratories.
The illegal manufacture of methamphetamine has become a serious problem in California in recent years, costing the state millions of dollars for the enforcement of drug laws and clean-up of clandestine laboratories. Although most legitimate users of chemicals purchase the chemicals at the wholesale level, much of the precursor chemicals used in illegal manufacturing are sold at the retail level. Thus, a tax on retail sale would not affect most legitimate users. Also, retail sellers must already register with the state, so the tax collection process would be relatively easy.
Please see our 1996-97 Analysis, page D-142.
Tracy Kenny: 445-4660
Designating DOJ as lead agency for all foreign prosecutions would enhance law enforcement coordination efforts between foreign governments and California. Requiring local governments to pay for crime lab services and prosecution in conflict of interest cases would properly align local government's funding and programmatic responsibilities for investigation and prosecution of criminal cases.
Foreign prosecution: Please see our 1997-98 Analysis, page D-179. Reimbursement for crime lab services: Please see our 1997-98 Analysis, page D-174. Reimbursement for legal work in conflict of interest cases: Please see our 1988-89 Analysis, page 53.
Tracy Kenny or Eraina Ortega: 445-4660