The Not-so-Golden State of Sentencing and Corrections: California's Lessons for the Nation

Abstract

California has become the unfortunate poster child of dysfunctionality in American criminal justice, with most of its prison system under federal court control. From 2006–2008, the Stanford Criminal Justice Center undertook an innovative series of Executive Sessions to help diagnose California's problems and proffer solutions. Participants included a range of high-level state officials, judges, policymakers, and agency heads, as well as academic experts, and this article synthesizes the consensus observations of this group. The main symptom of California's problems is the endless recycling of offenders through parole revocations back into and out of prison, but the sources of the problem lie in a poorly coordinated political economy of incarceration. The system is plagued by regulatory mismatches, failure to collect needed data on offenders and transmit it efficiently within the system, and irrational externalities and disincentives that thwart the goal of sound cost-benefit analysis. However unusual, California offers useful lessons for the whole nation, especially the value of seeing the relationship between the macro governmental structure and the micro level of daily administrative practice. The key lesson is that retooling the system from the ground level up can help instill some faith in and momentum for reform.

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