{"id":958,"date":"2014-02-19T20:13:37","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T04:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=958"},"modified":"2014-03-05T21:27:37","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T05:27:37","slug":"californias-broken-prison-system-texas-billion-dollar-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=958","title":{"rendered":"California’s Broken Prison System and Texas’ Billion-Dollar Fix"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: California Department of Corrections<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Raul Hernandez<\/strong><\/p>\n

The bold headlines in the New York Times last week read:<\/span> “Court Gives California More Time to Ease Prison Crowding”<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat amounts to a legal and political victory\u201d for Gov. Jerry Brown, three federal judges gave California two more years to reduce severe overcrowding in state prisons, the Grey Lady reported.<\/p>\n

After reading the headline, I laughed.<\/p>\n

A year ago, Brown said prison overcrowding was in the state’s rear-view mirror. \u00a0But now, Gov. Brown\u00a0<\/span>plans to pursue a \u201cstrategy\u201d of using rehabilitation programs to ease the overcrowding.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also recognized the headline from decades ago. \u00a0It \u00a0could have been lifted from similar stories I and others had written about another state’s broken prison system.<\/p>\n

As Yogi Berra said, \u201cIt’s deja vu all over again.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But I wondered. How much rehab can California do in two years to turn inmates\u2019 shank-making skills into those worthy of a Ford-assembly line or flipping burgers at the Golden Arches?<\/span><\/p>\n

The bigger question: Who is going to pay for the Shop 101 classes to bring the inmates’ skills up to speed and stave off the federal court?<\/p>\n

Under Brown\u2019s leadership, California\u2019s surplus is more than $2 billion. But good luck in trying to convince the state\u2019s taxpayers to use a dime of this extra money to rehabilitate criminals, especially when a lot of the roads, schools and bridges are in need of repair.<\/p>\n

In the near future, however, I believe Californians are going to be spooked into writing a big fat check for concrete and steel projects to expand the state’s prison system and ease its overcrowding.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Well, many years ago, another state\u2019s prison system had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 20th Century by the federal courts.<\/p>\n

It was Texas. Yep, Lone Star State. The home of America\u2019s team, the Dallas Cowboys and Friday night football.<\/p>\n

Texas, where Death Row has its own express lane, the ole boys love their guns and where in some rural towns, cattle outnumber people.<\/p>\n

After eight years of\u00a0legal haggling, maneuvering, bickering and posturing, \u00a0Judge William Wayne Justice took over the Texas prison system and ordered sweeping changes and reforms.<\/p>\n

He did this after a 129 day trial.<\/p>\n

For starters, Judge Justice ordered a 95 percent prison population capacity; ordered the separation of hardcore felons from other inmates and that more guards be hired along with improving the medical treatment of inmates.<\/span><\/p>\n

The population cap resulted in turning many inmates back out in the streets after they served a fraction of their sentences.<\/p>\n

California’s Sweet Words and Promises<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now comes sushi-eating California with its sun-tan politicos who are trying to sweet talk the black-robed judicial gods, the Judge William Justices of this world.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a newspaper reporter in El Paso back then, I was well acquainted with their judicial power. \u00a0I wrote and read about it. \u00a0At times, this power seemed unimaginable, sometimes majestic and magical.<\/p>\n

Power that\u00a0often came with short fuses and frustration born out of years of dickering with Texas’ long-winded hired legal guns toting excuses and briefcases full of promises and legalese.<\/p>\n

It was hard back then to put a happy face on any of these stories.<\/p>\n

Like Texas, California is also going through the predictable phases and legal tantrums \u2013 first, deny that the prison system is busted.<\/p>\n

Next, the bureaucrats pontificate and promise to fix what is broken, and finally, beg for more time to find solutions \u2013 imaged, real or unattainable \u2013 like the dangling of rehab programs for inmates.<\/p>\n

A year ago and before declaring victory, Brown was in denial.<\/p>\n

He asked a three-judge federal panel to simply drop its order for further reduction of the prison inmate population.<\/p>\n

He is quoted as saying that the prison overcrowding problem had been fixed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe prison emergency is over in California is over,” Brown said in a front-page article. “The troubled situation in California prisons has been remedied. It is now time to return control of the prison system to California.”<\/p>\n

Inmate-advocate groups decried Brown’s actions, saying overcrowding remains a severe problem and that remedies exist to fix that situation without endangering public safety, the article stated.<\/span><\/p>\n

The federal gods, obviously, frowned and rejected Brown’s plea to return the prison back to the state’s bureaucrats who denied, for years, that inmates were housed like cords of wood inside the prison’s gymnasiums.<\/p>\n

Now, Brown is looking at rehab programs; the federal judges said two more years.<\/p>\n

The clock \u00a0is ticking.<\/p>\n

Texas Had Astute Writ Writers Behind Bars<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Texas, it all began in 1972, inside one of \u00a0the most notorious and brutal prison systems in America.<\/p>\n

A very unhappy Texas inmate and jailhouse lawyer David Ruiz with a lot of time on his hands and fed-up with the medieval conditions of the state\u2019s prisons decided to take his grievance to the federal courts.<\/p>\n

Ruiz filed a handwritten civil rights lawsuit that was partially written on toilet paper, according to publish reports.<\/p>\n

Citing violations of the 8th Amendment, Ruiz alleged that Texas’ prisons constituted “cruel and unusual punishment” that included overcrowding, inadequate security, inadequate health care, unsafe working conditions and severe and arbitrary disciplinary procedures.<\/p>\n

“If you cage an animal and kick him every day, one day that animal is going to attack,” Ruiz would tell an AP reporter in a 1992 interview. “I never asked for a Holiday Inn. I asked to be treated as a human being.”<\/p>\n

Texas’ Building Tender System<\/strong><\/p>\n

More gripes were tacked onto the case as it dragged through the federal courts and civil rights lawyers took it over.<\/p>\n

First and foremost, they noted that Ruiz’s \u201ccruel and unusual punishment\u201d allegation was hiding in plain sight in Texas\u2019 penal system.<\/p>\n

The prison guards were allowing goons to usurp their authority and run the penal institute.<\/p>\n

Texas\u2019 inmates were under the mercy and control of the prison\u2019s so-called \u201cBuilding Tenders\u201d who were basically in-house criminal thugs who were allowed to maintain order and discipline in large sections of the prisons.<\/p>\n

With the guard\u2019s blessings and backing, building tenders savagely beat and used sheer terror to keep other prisoners in line.<\/p>\n

That was the way \u00a0things were done deep in the heart of Texas, and nobody questioned it until Ruiz filed his lawsuit.<\/p>\n

The son of migrant farm workers, Ruiz, who was the youngest of 13 children, never realized that his legal petition would result in the longest running prison lawsuit in U.S. history.<\/p>\n

It would also cost taxpayers millions of dollars and countless of courtroom hours.<\/p>\n

After the building tender system was dissolved, there was a power vacuum<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Judge William Justice dismantled the building tenders system, there was a power vacuum and inmates began forming groups, mostly along racial lines.<\/p>\n

A dark side emerged.<\/p>\n

First the groups were organized for protection and cultural pride. Soon, it was to control the drugs, prostitution, extortion and power inside the prison walls.<\/p>\n

Prison gangs — Texas Syndicate, Mexican Mafia, Aryan Brotherhood to name a few — were spawned, resulting in an explosion of violence in 1980s.<\/p>\n

Sheriff Leo and The Bus Ride<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every time, I interviewed El Paso Sheriff Leo Samaniego back then about the Judge Justice\u2019s court order limiting the prison population to alleviate overcrowding, there was frustration in his Mex-Tex drawl.<\/p>\n

Some inmates would be put on the “Blue Bird,” a bus that would take them to prison and only to return to the community in a short time.<\/p>\n

“They just go up there to take a shower and they put them back on the bus and send them back,” Samaniego quipped, trying to smile. “Why even bother?”<\/span><\/p>\n

One white-collar criminal given a 10-year prison returned to the county after service less than three years others were there weeks or months. State residents were outraged and demanded changes. There were fears about who was getting out of prison and who was already back on the streets.<\/p>\n

The recidivism rate rose dramatically.<\/p>\n

Visiting Texas’ Prisons, Newspaper Articles and Ruiz’s Funeral<\/strong><\/p>\n

The newspaper, El Paso Herald-Post, sent myself, reporter Jim Bole and a photographer to Huntsville, Texas to do a series of articles about the Lone Star State’s broken prisons.<\/p>\n

Our stories included interviews with inmates, experts and bureaucrats.<\/p>\n

I got to interview a boyhood friend, Leo Lozano, who had been in solitary confinement for years and was considered a shot-caller in the violent Texas Syndicate prison gang. \u00a0Allegations he denied but years later, he said he left the prison gang.<\/p>\n

Our stories \u00a0just added to the pile of newspaper articles and in-depth reporting that had been written about Texas prison overcrowding.<\/p>\n

By the end of the 1980s, Texas residents, many who had disdain for Judge Justice, decided to pay for a billion dollar prison construction to relieve the overcrowding that expanded the prison units from 18 at the time of the Ruiz trial to more than 90 units by the 1990s.<\/span><\/p>\n

Judge Justice never mince words about why he took over the prison system.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his ruling after the trial and after listening to 80 witnesses, Judge William Wayne Justice ruled: “The evidence before the court revealed a prison in which rapes, beatings and servitude are the currency of power. To preserve their physical safety, some vulnerable inmates simply subject to being bought and sold among groups of prison predators…To expect such a world to rehabilitate wrong-doers is absurd. To allow such a world to exist is unconstitutional.”<\/p>\n

Ruiz died of natural causes in prison on Nov. 11, 2005. He was serving a life-sentence for aggravated robbery and had spent all but four years of his adult life locked up. His funeral service was held in East Austin.<\/p>\n

At his funeral was Judge Justice who was 86 years old. \u00a0He sat quietly among family, friends and ex-prisoners, according to publish reports.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Consent Decree April 20, 1981<\/a><\/p>\n

Letter from Texas State Comptroller Bob Bullock to Judge William Wayne Justice – 1985<\/a><\/p>\n

Letter from Texas State Comptroller Bob Bullock to Judge William Wayne Justice – 1986<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  By Raul Hernandez The bold headlines in the New York Times last week read: “Court Gives California More Time to Ease Prison Crowding” \u201cWhat amounts to a legal and political victory\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,25],"tags":[184,185,186,182,187,183],"class_list":["post-958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home-main-slider","category-notes-cases-thoughts-quotes","tag-california","tag-gov-brown","tag-judge-william-wayne-justice","tag-ruiz-vs-estelle","tag-sheriff-leo-samaniego","tag-texas-prisons"],"yoast_head":"\nCalifornia's Broken Prison System and Texas' Billion-Dollar Fix<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"  By Raul Hernandez The bold headlines in the New York Times last week read: "Court Gives California More Time to Ease Prison Crowding" \u201cWhat amounts\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=958\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"California's Broken Prison System and Texas' Billion-Dollar Fix\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"  By Raul Hernandez The bold headlines in the New York Times last week read: "Court Gives California More Time to Ease Prison Crowding" \u201cWhat amounts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/?p=958\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Justice Notebook\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AmericanJusticeNotebook\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-02-20T04:13:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-03-06T05:27:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cjnotebook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/CalifPrisonOvercrowding.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Raul\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Raul\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cjnotebook.com\\\/?p=958#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cjnotebook.com\\\/?p=958\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Raul\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cjnotebook.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/f5521baddca77b521f012298775186c0\"},\"headline\":\"California’s Broken Prison System and Texas’ Billion-Dollar Fix\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-02-20T04:13:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-03-06T05:27:37+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cjnotebook.com\\\/?p=958\"},\"wordCount\":1686,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cjnotebook.com\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cjnotebook.com\\\/?p=958#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cjnotebook.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2014\\\/02\\\/CalifPrisonOvercrowding.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"California\",\"Gov. 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