SACRAMENTO — When a judge put Robert Sillen in charge of healthcare in California prisons, the medical staff was vastly underpaid. Software used to track inmates' medical histories could not transfer information between computers.
San Quentin State Prison had only one phone line for incoming calls and none to dial out, isolating doctors who needed to talk to specialists and other professionals.
"It's just shameful what the state has done," Sillen said in an interview.
He has been trying to fix things, but solutions come at a price: Healthcare spending in state prisons has doubled in the last two years.
Sillen's court-ordered intervention is just one reason California's prison spending has far outpaced the swelling number of inmates, contributing to the state's projected $14-billion budget gap, which would be the worst since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's election in 2003.
The prison population has grown by 8% since 2003, to more than 173,000. But the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's budget has exploded, increasing 79% to $8.5 billion, and is expected to top $10 billion next year.
Prison spending now is greater than that for any other major program except public schools and healthcare for the poor. The nonpartisan legislative analyst's office projects 6% annual increases in prison spending for the next five years as a new prison and dozens of building additions are constructed and opened.
"We know there's a lot coming down the pike," said Daniel Carson, who oversees criminal justice spending for the legislative analyst.
Several causes of the department's fiscal metastasis are the same that plague many parts of California's $145-billion state budget: spending set at the ballot box and in the courts; bureaucratic waste; and more than a decade of neglect in construction, repairs and other improvements. In addition, failed efforts to help inmates stay away from crime after their release have boosted prison spending.
The fiscal problems might not be so severe if the prison population had dropped as crime rates went down. But it hasn't, largely because lawmakers have been lengthening sentences and many released inmates end up back behind bars for new crimes.
