Detail The Challenges of "Realignment"; California's Overcrowded Prisons   Oleh:  [s.n] Jenis: Article from Bulletin/Magazine Dalam koleksi: The Economist (http://search.proquest.com/) vol. 403 no. 8785 (May 2012), page 39-40. Topik: Prisons; State Budgets; Labor Unions; Government Employees Ketersediaan Perpustakaan Pusat (Semanggi) Nomor Panggil: EE29.71 Non-tandon: 1 (dapat dipinjam: 0) Tandon: tidak ada     Lihat Detail Induk Isi artikel Jerry Brown can point to only one clear policy achievement since he became governor of California again last year. It has nothing to do with California's ongoing fiscal crisis, which Mr Brown has so far failed to solve: this week he announced that a budget deficit he had previously estimated at $9 billion has swelled to almost $16 billion. Instead, it concerns the equally pressing disaster in the state's prisons. Mr Brown's sweeping reform, if it goes as planned, might alleviate this crisis and become a model for other states. But it is risky. Excessive incarceration is an American problem. The country has about 5% of the world's population but almost 25% of its prisoners, with the world's largest number of inmates and highest per capita rate of incarceration. California eagerly participated in this trend of locking up ever more people. During Mr Brown's previous stint as governor in the 1970s the state switched to more inflexible sentencing. It then spent another two decades adding "tough-on-crime" laws that kept extending sentences even for minor crimes. The resulting prison-building boom, and rapacious bargaining by the prison-guards union, meant that state penitentiaries became the fastest-growing major cost in the state budget. California's 33 prisons and associated camps therefore bear no small responsibility for the state's recurring budget crises, and the resultant crunch on school and university funding. Opini Anda Klik untuk menuliskan opini Anda tentang koleksi ini! Kembali

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