Pubdate: Tue, 22 Jan 2008
Source: California Aggie, The (UC Davis, CA Edu)
Copyright: 2008sThe California Aggie
Contact:  http://www.californiaaggie.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2725
Author: James Noonan
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)

THE PRISON PROBLEM

If you're anything like me and have spent your whole  life in the 
great state of California, you've probably  come to realize that 
personal space is at a premium. A  state population of over 36 
million people practically  guarantees that everything from our 
freeways to our  universities is drastically overcrowded. Perhaps 
the  best, and most frightening example of this 
obscene  overpopulation is evident in the California State  Prison 
system, which embraces a long history of overcrowding and over-funding.

In 2007, the state prison system was estimated to hold  somewhere 
around 170,000 inmates, close to 70 percent  higher than the system's 
maximum capacity of 100,000.  Some facilities, such as Centennial 
State Prison, are  filled to over 200 percent of their maximum 
capacity,  creating an extremely hostile and dangerous environment 
for guards and inmates alike. Numbers such as these  seem even more 
ridiculous when you consider that over  20,000 of these inmates are 
serving sentences for  nonviolent, drug-related crimes, and that the 
vast  majority of such sentences came as a result of simply 
possessing illicit drugs, not from manufacturing or  selling them. 
However, in recent years, the state  government's policy seems to 
consist of simply ignoring  such absurd statistics and throwing 
billions of tax  dollars at the problem, rather than examining why 
such  a huge portion of the population remains incarcerated.

By now, some of you are probably reading this and  wondering how 
prison overpopulation could possibly have  a negative impact on your 
life. Most of you probably  don't plan on going to prison any time 
soon, and  therefore assume that you'll never see any of the  adverse 
effects that this problem could cause. However,  the truth of matter 
is that we, as students at a public  university, are quite possibly 
the people who are most  affected by this problem. Recently, the San 
Francisco  Chronicle reported that $10 billion of the state's 
2007-2008 budget was being allocated to the operation  of the 
corrections system, and $12 billion being  allocated toward higher 
education. The same article  suggests that, if budget trends 
continue, correctional  spending would overtake higher education in 
the next five years. While these statistics alone should be  enough 
to call into question the value our state puts  on education, the 
situation becomes even worse when one  considers that the $10 billion 
doesn't include the  expenses of constructing new facilities, which 
will  cost the state another $7 billion. With the use of a  little 
arithmetic, one can see that the state plans to  spend $5 billion 
more on its prisons than it does its  schools.

According to these numbers, one could claim that  California cares 
more about maintaining the largest  prison population in the country 
than it does about  educating its young adult population. Perhaps no 
one in  the state government has stopped to think that  providing an 
education to the young people of  California would result in less 
people turning to a  life of crime, and therefore serve to reduce the 
number  of people going to prison.

Whatever the case may be, it's clear that California  has its 
priorities and values all mixed up, and that  the already debt-ridden 
college students will be the  ones who end up paying the price.

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JAMES NOONAN is tired of having his education  marginalized by the 
state government. All those who  feel the same way are welcome to 
contact him at   ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom