California Governor Jerry Brown has canceled construction plans to build a new $356-million death row at San Quentin prison, saying it would be "unconscionable" to spend so much on condemned inmates as the state is slashing budgets for education and other social services. The Governor said "At a time when children, the disabled and seniors face painful cuts to essential programs, the state of California cannot justify a massive expenditure of public dollars for the worst criminals."




Apparently the construction of the new facility would have cost California's general fund almost $30 million A YEAR for the next 25 YEARS. Almost $800 MILLION DOLLARS. I was stunned to learn previous administrations have already spent about $20 million on planning and design for a two-building complex since the project was approved in 2003 (!) JUST to plan and design this thing! Its not surprising California's finances are in such a terrible state if this is how our tax dollars are being spent. I wonder if anywhere it is posted, a breakdown of where all this money went and to whom? Who is accountable and why aren't they being called to account? I don't suppose for the most part Californians have had any clue this has been going on.

To begin with I am NOT an advocate for the death penalty. I have never seen where it offers any more of a deterrent to murder or any other heinous crime than say the idea of a life sentence in prison, for such individuals who would commit such acts. In fact I tend to believe that if anything, believing one would spend the rest of his life in prison would be a much stronger deterrant to such crimes for most.Thats IF anyone who commits murder is in the state of mind to even consider the consequences, which in most cases I don't believe they are, in the moments of the act itself.

Even as it seems a death penalty is going to exist in this country for most states, I also don't understand why Death Row even needs to exist as a separate entity. After seeing first hand our nations system of incarceration, I don't see any reason these same inmates cannot be held and housed with and under basically the same conditions other" dangerous", "violent", "high risk" inmates are held in the High Security Prisons. We have, after all, all security levels of prison, from the minimum security Camps to the Super Max facilities. Why are prisoners who have been condemned to die kept in solitary cells apart from the main prison area for years, even decades, as they await their appointment with the executioner? Call me crazy, it makes no sense! Other than heaping punishment upon punishment. The end result is still the same, is that satisfaction of revenge, of imparting as much punishment, for as long as possible, worth the cost? And by costs I mean "financial", to all taxpayers, because, clearly, that cost to the victims is justifiable. But my blog today is about the financial costs, the waste. I was sickened to read "Conditions on the existing death row are "just dismal," said Donald Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, which advocates for inmates' rights. The cells are cramped, old and dilapidated, he said, and don't offer prisoners enough room to exercise. The worst conditions, including bird and rodent infestation and a plumbing problem that created "stalactites of human detritus" hanging over balconies, were cleaned up in response to a lawsuit a few years ago, Specter said." HOW can these conditions exit with taxpayer money allocating $135000 a year to every inmate on Death Row???!

We see our underfunded schools failing, we see social programs for the poor and elderly being scrapped...but the prison budget just gets bigger every year. And reports tell us Death Row costs us a staggering THREE TIMES the cost of regular encarceration!

An article I read stated California spends $44,500 a year on each prisoner, with, again, the cost of Death Row three times that. Where is there a public accounting for where/how this money, this incredulous outlay of taxpayer money, is being spent? Because although my son is in a federal prison for a marijuana "crime", its clear to anyone with eyesight, very little of the dollars supposedly spent on each federal inmate each year, actually IS spent on the inmate.

For some reason the Federal Govt's costs to house an inmate are almost half the costs of California's State prisons, as of last year the federal costs came in at reportedly, $27,250 per inmate, that cost of course is predicated on all costs to the facility including inmate care and "maintenance". Again, seeing firsthand the diet and the housing accommodations of federal prisoners (at least in a Low Security and a Minimum Security facility, both "Private" as well) I fail to see where the bulk of this expenditure lies, because CLEARLY its not being spent ON the prisoners themselves. For my son to eat a 'somewhat' healthier diet than the prison chow hall provides, my husband and I send him several hundred dollars per month to purchase from the prison commissary, healthier options with which he cooks his own meals. For those less fortunate they must rely solely on the nutrient-free but "required caloric" count the prison meals serve up. But of course I' ve come to understand the racket that the prison industrial complex has become, rather, has been for a long, long time, and will continue to be under the current system.

More than anything I just wonder at how "accepting" & unquestioning we are as a nation, of that system, particularly now, in the current financial straights we find ouselves...the country literally hanging by its fingernails over a cliff because of mispent, criminal and otherwise, taxpayer and investor money. Why is it no one ever demands to know how and why THAT MUCH MONEY is supposedly being "spent" on one of the nations biggest gobblers of taxpayer money (other than our military spending)? We elect one official after another, one President after another, and of all the expectations we have of them, why do we not expect, no, DEMAND more in our nations Justice System, and its sidekick, Encarcerations? If we did and if there was an investigation, a public accounting of the costs of that system, I believe the results would shock and stun most.

"Questions are a burden to others, answers are a prison for oneself." Patrick McGoohan