6,900 beds cut in prison plan

California's $7.9 billion prison construction and rehabilitation plan will provide at least 6,900 fewer beds than previously promised and take longer to complete, according to testimony at a legislative hearing Tuesday and interviews with corrections officials.

An expansion plan slated for existing prisons has been downsized from 16,000 to 13,000 beds, officials from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation told lawmakers at a state Senate Public Safety Committee hearing. The expansion beds will now cost $222,000 each, or 48 percent more than originally estimated, and won't come on line until December 2009 – 11 months later than originally scheduled.

The construction plans became law last year under Assembly Bill 900, which promised a total of 53,000 new beds. The reconfigured plans may require millions more in funds that have yet to be allocated.

Senate Public Safety Committee Chair Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, said in an interview the figures reaffirm her position that AB 900 "was the wrong policy for the wrong reason."

"You can't get past the $222,000 per bed figure," she said. "There is black and there is white, and $222,000 per bed, I don't care how you divide it, that is a staggering, overwhelming cost to the taxpayers."

Republican committee member Sen. Dave Cogdill of Modesto said AB 900 backers proffered the plan last year as a way to keep the state from releasing inmates early. He expressed frustration that it is getting delayed and downsized at the same time the administration is trying to release 22,000 prisoners early.

"We moved ahead quickly last year on approving one of the largest bond issues in the history of the state in order to deal with our overcrowding crisis," Cogdill said during Tuesday's 2 1/2 hour hearing. "Instead, what we've got is a plan that moves it off by 20 months ... and the only solution we've been offered is to let people out of jail. That's not acceptable, not only to the Legislature but to the people of California."

At Tuesday's hearing, corrections construction chief Deborah Hysen laid out the reasons for the added costs, smaller size and lengthier timeline on the program. Among them: revised plans calling for more cells instead of dorms, a failure in the initial planning to include enough space for rehabilitation programs and health care, and infrastructure problems that prevented expansion at some of the prisons.

The Legislature, she said, added to the delays because it failed to allow private contractors to design as well as build the new projects, instead using state employees for design jobs.

Costs are expected to increase, Hysen said, due to contractors charging "what the market will bear."

AB 900's provision to help the counties build 13,000 more jail beds is in line for a bigger reduction than the bed program. C. Scott Harris, executive director of the Corrections Standards Authority, estimated that AB 900 will pay for only 60 percent to 70 percent of the beds envisioned, or 3,900 to 5,200 fewer.

"Things are much more expensive around the state," Harris said.

Meanwhile, the $1.14 billion AB 900 allocated for hospital beds won't be enough to build the 8,000 originally thought, according to J. Clark Kelso, the prison system's federal medical care receiver.

"My understanding is that all the players understood, you're not going to be able to build facilities for that many patient/inmates at that cost," Kelso said.

Kelso said he is now revising the hospital bed plan, but not to downsize it: He thinks he might need as many as 10,000 beds.

Officials also will downsize the "re-entry" program that initially called for 16,000 beds in 32 mini-prisons around the state, Hysen said. Corrections officials had touted the program as crucial to a long-term prison fix because of its emphasis on rehabilitation programming designed to cut California's worst-in-the nation 70 percent recidivism rate.

About the writer:

• Call Andy Furillo, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1141.