Deborah Tobola
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Prison Reform
by Deborah Tobola
As we ring in the New Year, there are hopeful changes on the horizon of prison reform. It took decades to build California's prison system, a $10 billion a year goliath that returns an average of 70% of its inmates.
The price tag has prompted voters and policy makers to reconsider mass incarceration as the visceral response to criminal behavior.
After California voters heard about prisoners doing 25 to life for crimes such as petty theft, they voted in favor of Proposition 36 in November of 2012. Now, Californians cannot be sentenced to life in prison for stealing a piece of pizza. According to the New York Times, about a third of California's 9,000 Three Strikers could be released under Prop 36.
Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop a court order demanding the release of almost 10,000 inmates. The Court had ruled earlier that prison overcrowding constituted cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Last summer, Governor Jerry Brown proposed a compassionate release program for seriously ill and dying inmates. Inmates 60 or older who have served 25 or more years in prison would be eligible.
More recently, he's advocated for a sentencing commission, which would address problems such as geographical sentencing disparity and sending people to state prison for low-level crimes, such as drug possession.
Amendment of the Three Strikes law, releasing inmates from overcrowded prisons, granting more compassionate releases, and establishing a statewide sentencing commission will save taxpayers billions of dollars. These measures will dismantle the Prison Industrial complex one brick at a time.
In the meantime, California counties are vying for SB 1022 funds--$500 million in bonds to build new jails or renovate existing facilities. Jails are now overcrowded because AB 109, passed in 2011, called "realignment," transferred thousands of prison inmates to county jails statewide.
If you build it, they will come, we learned in Field of Dreams. If you build a ball field, ball players will come. If you build a prison or jail, inmates will come.
And if you build a theatre company, actors will come. Five years ago this month, we began building the Poetic Justice Project, the only theatre company that engages formerly incarcerated people as actors.
More than 80 men, women, and youth have performed in PJP productions over the years. Most of them — 98% — are still with us in the community, instead of returning to prison or jail.
As we enter our fifth year, we celebrate our Central Coast audiences, who have come to our productions, supported us with donations, and responded ardently at each performance.
Our resolution is to reach even more people in 2014, unlocking hearts and minds with bold, original theatre.
Poetic Justice Project's WOMEN BEHIND THE WALLS, Cast, Crew and Friends, Alcatraz Island, 2011
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