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DA Prison Overcrowding

Empirics prove – a decrease in plea bargaining leads to harsher sentencing and a massive spike in the prison population.

McCoy 84 DETERMINATE SENTENCING, PLEA BARGAINING BANS, AND HYDRAULIC DISCRETION IN CALIFORNIA

Author(s): CANDACE McCOY

Source: The Justice System Journal, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Winter, 1984), pp. 256-275 Published by: Taylor and Francis, Ltd.

Stable URL: http:www.jstor.org/stable/20877749

This increasing incarceration rate is not because of a rise in crime. For illustration purposes, numbers of persons arrested statewide for the two most-frequent offense categories—robbery and burglary—are included on Table 3 in parentheses. The number of persons arrested for burglary since 1980 has not increased much.12 A similar trend is evident in robbery statistics. Yet incarceration rates increased significantly. In sum, a very general conclusion that can be made from studying trends in California felony prosecution is that more felons are being imprisoned and that to an extent determinate sentencing and the plea bargaining limitation have caused this. Most influential has been a decided shift in sentencing patterns relating to probation. Decisions about granting probation are strongly influenced by plea negotiation, especially in Municipal Court. The new plea bargaining limitation, if it caused harsher sentencing by shifting plea negotiation to Municipal Court, would be expected to cause probation rates to drop. In the few years immediately following passage of Proposition 8, this has indeed occurred. Furthermore, in certain offense categories, average prison sentence lengths have also increased. Conclusion: Impact on Prison Populations and Policies Have the new laws caused prison overcrowding? Though many factors may influence prison density, there can be no doubt that California prisons are bursting, and that something causes this. From 1977 through 1981 (when the effects of D.S.L. would first be felt) there was an increase in state prison population from 21,525 to 26,768. This represents an increase of over twenty-four percent in prison population, yet there was little expansion of available space during that time.

The right to counsel is a joke for poor individuals – given the limited amount of time defendants have, abandoning plea bargaining ultimately condemns people to massive imprisonment.

Cohen 13 Cohen, Andrew. "How Americans Lost the Right to Counsel, 50 Years After 'Gideon'." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 13 Mar. 2013. Web. 06 Dec. 2017. https:www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/how-americans-lost-the-right-to-counsel-50-years-after-gideon/273433/ SJ DT

But 50 years later there is also much to mourn about Gideon and the Supreme Court standards that followed it. Today, there is a vast gulf between the broad premise of the ruling and the grim practice of legal representation for the nation's poorest litigants. Yes, you have the right to a court-appointed lawyer today -- the right to a lawyer who almost certainly is vastly underpaid and grossly overworked; a lawyer who, according to a Brennan Center for Justice report published last year, often spends less than six minutes per case at hearings where clients plead guilty and are sentenced. With this lawyer -- often just a "potted plant" -- by your side, you've earned the dubious honor of hearing the judge you will face declare that this arrangement is sufficient to secure your rights to a fair trial. Today, sadly, the Gideon ruling amounts to another unfunded mandate -- the right to a lawyer for those who need one most is a constitutional aspiration as much as anything else. And the reasons are no mystery. Over the intervening half-century, Congress and state lawmakers consistently have refused to fund public defenders' offices adequately. And, as it has become more conservative since 1963, the United States Supreme Court has refused to force legislators to do so. "I think the Court doesn't have the initiative to get involved in improving the administration of justice in every state," former Justice John Paul Stevens told me in late January. "The Court's really not the institution to get involved in that." So today, the justices won't secure the basic fair trial rights they themselves recognized in Gideon. And today, elected officials see no political value in spending the money it would take to ensure that every American has an opportunity for equal justice. It's not that there aren't solutions to the problem of securing a meaningful right to counsel for all litigants. There are plenty of solutions floating around. The problem is the political and legal will to implement those policy choices -- to make good on the promise the Supreme Court made to America 50 years ago amid such hope and fanfare.

Incarceration is a form political exclusion that makes upward mobility impossible, re-entrenching further poverty and cyclical oppression.

Wacquant 05 (Loic, Distinguished University Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the New School for Social Research, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, and a Researcher at the Center for European Sociology in Paris. His interests comprise comparative urban marginality, the penal state, bodily crafts, social theory, and the politics of reason ) “Race as civic felony” UNESCO 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

The alienation of today’s convicts makes them social similes if not legal replicas of antebellum slaves in yet another respect: although they are barred from civic participation, they nonetheless weigh on the political scale at the behest and to the benefit of those who control their bodies, much as bonds people benefited their plantation masters under the ‘three-fifths’ clause of the US Constitution. Because inmates are tallied by the census as residents of the counties where they serve their sentence, they artificially inflate the population count as well as lower the average income level of the rural towns that harbour most prisons. As a result, these towns accrue added political power in terms of representation in their state legislature as well as garner extra federal funding intended to remedy poverty: public monies that would go to providing services such as education, medical care, and transportation and housing subsidies to poor blacks in the inner city are diverted to the benefit of the predominantly white population of prison municipalities. It is estimated that Cook County will lose $88 million in federal funding during the current decade because of the 26,000-odd Chicagoans (78 of them black) reckoned as residents of the downstate districts where they are incarcerated (Dugan, 2000). Similarly, the enumeration of convicts transfers political influence from their home to their host county, thereby diluting the electoral strength of blacks and Latinos living in the metropolitan districts from which most prisoners stem – and the more so as detention facilities are located further away from major cities. Thus 80 of New York state prisoners are African American and Hispanic and two-thirds come from New York City; but 91 of them are housed upstate, in the conservative lily-white districts where all of the new penitentiaries built since 1982 are located. Counting urban prisoners as rural dwellers for purposes of representation (even though the state constitution specifies that penal confinement does not entail loss or change of residence) violates the one-man, one-vote rule, and translates into a net loss of 43,740 residents for New York City, which is computed to have cost urban Democrats two seats in each of the state house and senate (Wagner 2002, p. 10–12). And, just as counting slaves boosted the political power of Southern states and allowed them to entrench slavery by controlling the national agenda, the ‘phantom’ population ofblack and brown prisoners enhances the political influence of white politicians who pursue social and penal platforms antithetical to the interests of ghetto residents. In particular, these elected officials have acquired a vested interest in the punitive policies of criminalisation of poverty and carceral escalation suited to replenishing the supply of unruly black bodies that guarantee correctional jobs, taxes,subsidies, and political pull to their communities, to the direct detriment of the segregated urban districtsthat furnish these convicts.

Turns the case –overcrowding leads to massive mental and physical health, decreases safety of the inmates and overall societal harms.

Bryan n.d. Bryan, James. "THE EFFECTS OF PRISON OVERCROWDING." THE EFFECTS OF PRISON OVERCROWDING. Patrick Crusade, n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2017. http:www.patrickcrusade.org/EFFECTS_OF_OVERCROWDING.html

The prison environment is characterized by factors, which can have adverse effects on individual inmates. In the prison setting crowded conditions are chronic, people prone to anti-social behavior are gathered, there is an absence of personal control and idleness and boredom can be prevalent. Research has indicated that overcrowding has three types of effects on the daily prison environment. First, there is less of everything to go around, so the same space and resources are made to stretch even further. The opportunities for inmates to participate in self-improvement and rehabilitative programs, such as academic, employment and vocational training are curtailed. The lack of work or work opportunities leads to inmate idleness, often reinforcing the maxim that idleness breeds discontent and disruptive behavior. In addition, lack of resources can apply to anything an inmate might need to use, such as washroom availability, library books, television lounge seating and recreational materials. The unavailability of resources can have twofold consequences. One is the frustration or unpleasantness of being limited or denied a resource, and the other is the fact that competition and conflict over limited resources often lead to aggression and violence. The second effect of overcrowding is on the individual inmateâ€Ts behavior. Crowding creates stress and this, in conjunction with other factors in a prison setting, can heighten the adverse effects of crowding. Idleness, fear, the inability to maintain personal identity, or to turn off unwanted interaction and stimulation, such as noise, all add to the stress of crowding. The adjustment process for inmates to cope with excess stress varies; it could be withdrawal, aggression or depression. Whatever way an inmate chooses to deal with crowding stress, generally they tend to be methods, which do not enhance the health of the inmate. The impact on social relations and interaction has been considered one of the most important effects of prison overcrowding. Findings have indicated that in crowded situations there is more aggression and competition for resources, less cooperation and more social withdrawal. Other individuals in a crowded situation are perceived as less attractive or interesting, and the social milieu itself becomes unpleasant. Also, social withdrawal in response to crowding manifests itself in various ways. Adopting a defensive or guarded attitude is one method of withdrawing, which by its nature decreases the quality of social interaction. Similarly, topics that dominate conversation in crowded settings tend to be less personal or self-relevant, even among well-acquainted people. The third effect involves a combination of the correctional systemâ€Ts inability to meet the increased demand for more space and the resulting harm to individual inmates. In an attempt to cope with the limited space available and the resulting overcrowding, there has been a strong tendency to misclassify offenders. To a certain degree, overcrowding has resulted in offenders being classified on the basis of the space available rather than the security level and programs most suitable for the offenders. This problem exists despite the fact that the offender classification process for security purposes is standardized. It has not been uncommon to find inmates, classified as medium security, incarcerated in maximum security institutions, while other inmates were in medium security facilities who would previously have been considered candidates for maximum security. However, the effects of misclassifying offenders due to overcrowding extend beyond the immediate consideration of there being too little space and too few resources. It also leads to slow progress through the corrections system and consequently to slow exit, which in turn perpetuates or increases the overcrowding problem. If the assignment of inmates is carried out solely on the basis of available space, inmates are being manipulated to meet the requirements of the corrections system rather than the environment and programs being modified to meet the requirements and needs of the inmates. This results in poor programming for inmates, which hinders their progress. Also, misclassification errors can result in inmates being labeled in a manner, which carries strong negative connotations. Since infractions result in a â€ofailure to adjustâ€? label, and since adjustment is a major criterion for progress through the system, a slow-down in the advancement of inmates can easily be predicted. Essentially, the effects of overcrowding and misclassification create a vicious cycle for the inmate. It begins with overcrowding, then the assignment to an inappropriate facility and programs (misclassification), followed by inmate stress reactions to the lack of services, no movement or progress within the system, being labeled as â€ofailure to adjust,â€? no parole release, rule infractions to regressive transfer. At this point the cycle starts all over again demonstrate a link between the amount of space available or the number of inmates per room, and the various measures of personal and institutional strain, such as blood pressure, illness complaints, disciplinary infractions and recidivism rates. Most studies indicated that crowded conditions could be reasonably well tolerated for short periods, but in terms of a long term crowded environment, prisons contained unusually high concentrations of the stress-inducing features. Crowding affects more than a selected few inmates within the prison environment. Crowding has been described as an interactive variable, which can sometimes cause, sometimes result from or sometimes exacerbate the impact of other conditions. No matter how the variable is classified, it produces a range of outcomes. Overcrowding of inmates has been connected with higher rates of psychiatric commitment higher rates of illness complaints and with an increased likelihood of recidivism. Also, rates of suicide and other forms of violent death have been found to be higher during periods of overcrowding as have increased rates of violence and other disciplinary infractions. Although many negative effects of crowding have been identified, overcrowding does not affect all prisons uniformly. For instance, it has been reported that larger institutions with younger inmates tend to be more affected by crowding. Moreover, substantial individual differences in responses to crowding have been found among various racial, ethic and socio- economic groups.

12/19/17