Schwarzenegger's prison plan rankles guards

SacBee via Scripts Howard ^ | 01-15-2006 | ANDY FURILLO

[Amerigomag]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Driven by a rising inmate population, prison spending in California is scheduled to exceed $8 billion this year. But the real intrigue in the state's 2006-07 corrections budget is in what it's proposing for the near- and long-term future Spelled out in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's summary on the spending plan is a proposal "to pursue authority to secure additional inmate capacity through contracts with other providers." The wording is fleshed out in the actual budget bill, which calls for a virtual doubling in the number of private prison beds in California, from the current 8,500 to an estimated 17,000 over the next two years.

Schwarzenegger's "strategic growth plan," meanwhile, lays out a bond-funded, decade-long, $12 billion jail and prison construction proposal that would create space for 83,000 additional inmates. About a third of that number, 27,000, are projected to be short-term parole violators who would be housed in county facilities instead of in state prisons, according to the governor's Department of Finance. Together, the shift of the parolees to county jails and the construction of the new private prison beds would eliminate the need for at least seven prisons based on the current population average of about 5,000 per institution that would otherwise have to be built to house the projected inmate increase over the next decade.

Already, the proposals have raised red flags with the politically-influential California Correctional Peace Officers Association. The union currently represents some 30,000 prison officers, but would lose out on thousands of additional dues-paying members if the administration follows through with its private prisons and county jails plan.

[taxesareforever]

Good ole union. Don't help the taxpayer out except out of more of their money.

[television is just wrong]

Who the heck let the unions into the state government???

They own us now.


Can we give them their walking papers.

They are nothing but a bunch of thugs.

[taxesareforever]

In Washington State the legislature mandated that state employees must belong to the union to hold a state job. Barf. Of course we all know that this is payback for union support for their election to office.

[DilJective]

Unions love their uneducated members- anyone with a sense of how the economy works won't be in one. Statistics show that unions are losing ground all over the country, except in the government. I wear a uniform, but have to work with an increasing number of civilians and the "GS" (general schedule) employees are the worst group of workers I've ever seen. I wish every day that the President would fire every stinkin' one of them, because they are worse than useless- their incompetence and apathy is a combat-multiplier for our enemies! If I were president, I'd start a campaign to show Americans how unamerican unions are and how they are ruining our country. Wal-Mart could hand out flyers of "why" they sell so many products that are made in china and really get the word out quickly.

[Carry_Okie]

Who the heck let the unions into the state government???

Jerry Brown and his chief of staff, Gray Davis.

[television is just wrong]

Thanks, I just remember, my father worked for the DMV. They were NOT union. So I didn't know when this happened. No wonder we can't make any changes in Sacramento. The Unions own the state.

Anything that is not of the Unions interest, is a NO GO. Looks like we've lost our government here folks.