"I am victim, hear me whine"

[madmusic]

Editorial: The cloak of victimhood

Prison guards on the air? It's contract time

Published 12:00 am PST Saturday, November 18, 2006

If you've had your TV on lately, you know that the prison guards union is at it again.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association is using its formidable political warchest to run ominous television ads to put pressure on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to do a repeat of the giveaway 2001-2006 prison guard contract.

In that last go-round, the union got a five-year deal (rather than the usual two-year contract) with excellent salary increases and enhanced retirement benefits, plus new limits on management control of sick leave, overtime and post assignments. The CCPOA boasts on its Web site that this was "without a doubt...the best contract ever signed by CCPOA." But you won't see that in the new media campaign.

Instead, the ads portray guards as victims. As in the union's previous media campaigns, the new ads feature pictures of Officer Suzi Jones shortly after she was beaten by an inmate at the New Folsom maximum security prison, video footage of riots and the line that "nine officers a day are being assaulted" in California prisons.

That "nine a day" figure appears to be drawn from state reports that include everything from spitting to throwing unidentified liquid to biting to scratching to punching to kicking to head-butting to attacks with weapons. There is no analysis of how many of these incidents are really serious assaults, but a 2001 examination of the Texas prison system by the Texas Office of the State Auditor may offer some perspective. Based on workers' compensation data, that study found that prison staff are hurt more often in slips, trips or falls than in an assault.

more: http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/79103.html

[bryant69]

1. Is there something wrong with a union fighting to improve the lives

of it's members? I'm confused. I thought that was kind of the point to a union.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[JuniperLea]

3. Did you read the whole article? They are improved enough, imho...

Make no mistake: Prison work is tough and not for everybody. It should be well compensated -- and it is. Today, salary, benefits and overtime come close to $100,000 a year.

[Vorta]

9. I tend to disbelieve these salary claims

For years the anti-union folks have claimed that auto-workers (suggesting line workers) were pulling down $50 and hour. A look at their living conditions ought to suggest otherwise. The way the anti-union folks (Republicans) arrived at this figure was to take the hourly wage plus all other employer costs, then divide by 2080 (standard work year).

If indeed correctional officers are making $100,000 a year gross pay, then that is excessive, especially since in and of itself it neither prevents nor compensates for the conditions marked as unacceptable.

[madmusic]

24. Read the rest of the thread and you will believe them.

[shanti]

35. believe it!

with overtime, they ARE making over 100 grand!

[JuniperLea]

52. According to the benefit schedule from my HR office

At $100k/yr, minus benefits, the guards would still be making $60k a year, which is $10k higher than starting pay for most cops in Los Angeles. No degree required. Seems like a good deal to me.

Instead of upping the salary, they should fight for more guards. That is the only way their working conditions will improve.

[madmusic]

57. That's another theme in the OP article...

They advertise the job is very dangerous and deadly, which keeps recruitment down but keeps overtime up.

The conclusion of the article is that it would be far better to find solutions to the prison crisis, and there is a crisis.

[JuniperLea]

59. I agree

I know a prison guard at Sybil Brand... barely makes $40k a year and the benefits suck.

[madmusic]

64. Sybil Brand is the women's jail, right?

If they joined the prison guard union, they could have 3 or 4 new women's jails and 4 or 5 times the women in jail in no time.

[Warpy]

4. Funny, I know a guard in the Texas prison system

and this stuff is pretty rare from his point of view. Of course, he's one of the good guys who treats prisoners with the respect that is due any human being, perhaps that makes the difference.

However, when a union is accused of "whining" by any editorialist, I have to wonder about the motives and what sort of payoff caused the article to be written.

Fe fi fo fum, I smell bullshit.

[The Deacon]

6. Even Noble

Lest we forget, people died in the streets, shot down like dogs to bring us the 40 hour work week & overtime. I wouldn't want to do the job of the prison guards - let them use any legal means to improve their lot. (Truth in posting: my father-in-law retired from the Kansas prison system & my sister is a guard at the Sedgwick County Jail in Wichita, KS. Their stories are why I know I wouldn't want to do the job.)

[madmusic]

10. If only that were the purpose of the union...

It once was, but now they only want to http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2667702&mesg_id=2667702">build more prisons.

[JuniperLea]

2. I was with them, until I read this...

"Make no mistake: Prison work is tough and not for everybody. It should be well compensated -- and it is. Today, salary, benefits and overtime come close to $100,000 a year."


Please... they are doing just fine! Police officers and teachers should be paid so well.

[Warpy]

5. Working conditions, working conditions!

I left nursing because of working conditions. They'd finally started throwing enough money at us that I no longer had to be a vegetarian, even though I continued to be one out of habit.

Nurses face the same risk of assault by drugged, confused, or just plain nasty patients. I have very fast reflexes, but I lost count of how many times I was punched, kicked, spat on, and worse before I developed them. Plus there is the problem of dangerously low staffing plus a lack of assistive personnel and equipment.

There are some things you can't just throw hush money at, and that's what I think the guards are complaining about. It's WORKING CONDITIONS, and you can't solve those problems without increasing staff and modifying the surroundings.

Money doesn't cure everything.

[JuniperLea]

48. Then maybe they should be fighting for better working conditions

Instead of more money?

[Warpy]

65. That's where unions have consistently failed

once the 8 hour day, 40 hour workweek, paid holidays, became law. They haven't addressed working conditions at all, although nurses in California did manage to agitate enough to get staffing ratio laws on the books.

Getting management to throw more money at labor is generally a much easier fight than forcing them to hire more people to do the work, to invest in safety and assistive equipment, and to do more to protect the health and safety of their workers.

[ComerPerro]

18. be wary of figures that list "salary, benifits, and overtime"

sounds to me like they pulled all the stops to push the salary as high as possible to outrage people and make readers think the guards are lazy slobs.


Hell, even minimum wage jobs pay well over $30,000 a year IF you factor in, say, the entire cost of benifits and forty hours of overtime.

[madmusic]

19. And...

It's still more than university professors make, and the guards only need a high school diploma.

[ComerPerro]

26. you can't be serious. You can't see the difference between the two jobs?

[madmusic]

30. Sure, the prison guard union controls California politics...

University professors don't.

That's the major difference.

[Name removed]

32. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[LeftishBrit]

37. Well, I'm a university teacher who thinks that my profession is underpaid and under-resourced

especially in the UK; and I can STILL see differences from prison guards.

(1) University teachers aren't (at least usually!) in danger of being killed or injured on the job. Prison guards are.

(2) Whatever damage a bad university teacher can do, it doesn't normally equal the damage that a bad prison guard can do. Which makes it really important to ensure that the best people are recruited for the prison service.

I suspect that salaries may not be the whole story, and more may need to be done about conditions as opposed to just increasing the pay for the same bad conditions. But like some other people on this thread, I get deeply suspicious of any newspaper article that uses the words 'whine' and 'victim' in this way. One of the achievements of the Right was to make it respectable to sneer at people for being 'victims'; and thus to stifle any debate about genuine injustices. Maybe the prison guards in this story don't deserve/ need a salary increase - but I would be more inclined to consider this as likely, if the tone of the article was more objective and less sneering.

[madmusic]

38. The sacbee is one of the most liberal papers in the state

It is not a right wing ploy at all on the paper's part. They have many articles on the guard union and they are not in any way anti-union. The CCPOA enmeshes itself into the politics of the state well beyond worker's rights:

History

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association began in 1957 as the California Correctional Officers Association (CCOA). Prior to the 1980s, the group was politically weak with its membership divided between the California State Employees' Association and the California Correctional Officers' Association. The CCPOA's rise to prominence began in the 1980s, when Don Novey became the group's president. Novey, the son of a prison guard and a guard himself, led a successful effort to combine Youth Authority supervisors and parole officers with prison guards, and the CCPOA's membership soared. Novey is credited with fostering a positive public image for the union, which under his leadership spent over half a million dollars a year during the 1980s on public relations. Novey was also an aggressive lobbier and propelled the union to a position of great influence in Sacramento politics. With a strategy of large campaign contributions and adroit political maneuvering, the CCPOA rose to become one of the most powerful unions in the state. The union's impact can be gauged by the rising annual prison guard salary (from $14,440 In 1980 to $54,000 in 2002), the growth in number of state prisons (from 13 in 1985 to 31 in 1995), and large increases in the California Department of Corrections budget (from $923 million in 1985 to $5.7 billion in 2004).

By 1992 the CCPOA was the state's second largest political action committee. The union contributed over a million dollars to various senatorial and assembly candidates that year. Many analysts believe the CCPOA helped Pete Wilson win the governorship with a contribution of over a million dollars, the largest independent campaign contribution on behalf of a candidate in California history. The CCPOA backed Gray Davis for his governorship bid in 1998 against Dan Lungren. Many believe the CCPOA's support was instrumental in Davis' win.

The CCPOA has been active in funding and promoting the victims' rights movement in California. In 1991 the CCPOA assisted the movement in creating the Doris Tate Crime Victims Bureau, and in 1992 the Crime Victims United of California, a political action committee which received over 95% of its startup costs from the CCPOA. In addition, the CCPOA has supported campaigns pushing longer prison terms and more "punitive" sentences for criminals. The CCPOA made large contributions to the 1994 campaign for Proposition 184,* the "three strikes" initiative which put repeat offenders behind bars, and is credited with helping the proposition to pass with over 70 percent of the vote.

snip

Prison Reform

The CCPOA made news during the winter and spring of 2005 for joining with legislators and victims rights organizations in opposing Gov. Schwarzenegger's prison reform proposals. In January, 2005, Gov. Schwarzenegger announced plans for major reforms in California government during his "State of the State" speech. Among his reforms was a proposal to re-structure the California prison system. One piece of his proposal would give a governor-appointed secretary direct control over operations of the state's prison and parole systems. The Department of Corrections and the California Youth Authority would be abolished and replaced by separate units of youth and adult operations that would report to the secretary through a chief deputy secretary. The new agency would be called the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and would cost $6 billion. Some critics claim the governor's move was designed to break up CCPOA influence of state prison leadership. In April 2004, Gov. Schwarzenegger struck a deal with legislative Democrats that eliminated his new agency plan. In return, Democrats agreed to give up their power to confirm wardens at state prisons. Some pundits believe that CCPOA influence on the California state Assembly and Senate led to the dissolution of Gov. Schwarzenegger's plan.

http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/library/htCaliforniaPrisonUnion.htm

There is much more at that site. It's not about worker's rights, which I support 100%. Everyone in the state agrees they are too powerful, but conservatives don't mind. And they all know the union can make or break an election based on a candidate's "tough on crime" policy, which means more prisons, which means more guards, which means more money into the union.

[Vorta]

21. Exactly!

$6/hr hourly wage
$2/hr health ins
$1/hr for some ebenfit you supposedly have but will never use
$3/hr for retirement you may never see
$1/hr as your share of the guy out on disability
$1/hr for "regulatory expense"
$.50/hr payroll tax (not paid to you)
$.50/hr workers comp
----------

$31,200 a year. Now why would the janitors be striking when they make $31,200 per year? Uppity , I tell you.

[madmusic]

22. Again: Prison Union Thinks It Runs the Capitol

Here's how bad the current contract is:

The guards get a roughly $200 million raise now. Same thing next year and the year following. They get extra vacation, plus overtime and sick pay loopholes.

It's freighted with bizarre concessions. If management phones an "intermittent" guard (substitutes for sick guards), but the "intermittent" officer claims to be sick too, the intermittent guy gets paid. Quoting Steffen, so we're clear: "If they call an intermittent officer at home to replace a sick guard, and the intermittent officer says, 'No I'm sick,' the intermittent officer gets paid as if they worked."

Why did the legislature agree to such garbage? Fear.

http://jillstewart.net/php/issues/issue040804.php

This isn't a worker's rights issue.

[madmusic]

23. Stop investigating abuse against prisoners by guards

Why Prison Guard Union Might Take Pay Cut

Okay, if you know anything about California, you know that the state correctional officer union is a heavy-duty political player.

So why are they discussing pay cuts with Governor Arnold?

Part of the answer may be fear of worse results if Schwarzenneger goes after the whole prison system, maybe slashing jobs as minor prisoners are released, as has been discussed.

But there's a tidbit in the above link that has a more sinister tradeoff implied. The prison guard union is demanding cuts in "waste" as a condition of their accepting pay cuts. Reducing excess middle management, cutting back executive perks-- all sounds good. But then this:

Union members will be hard-pressed to agree to salary reductions if they see corrections officials continue to spend heavily on management perks and lawyers for internal-affairs investigations, Corcoran said.

i.e. Stop investigating abuse against prisoners by guards and maybe we'll discuss helping you on the budget. A nasty proposed quid pro quo that progressives should keep alert to.

[Vorta]

25. Another poster put it correctly though, if they can get it they can have it.

I'd be the last to brag about Ronald Reagan and the air traffic controllers, but he did tell them to go to hell. Despite the essential nature of their jobs, he busted them and their union. Now, we can disagree about whether their demands were reasonable, and frankly it's been so long ago that I neither remember nor care enough to research the situation and demands.

If the guards' demand are unreasonable, the governor can lock them out and replace them with police officers or national guardsmen (assuming we have any that aren't in Iraq).

The prison guards want to get as much out of the taxpayer as possible. Imagine that. The real problem as I see it is with the governor, if he finds it more convenient to pay the extortion out of taxpayer money than to fight for what he considers the right solution, then who is really to blame? The guards for being greedy or the governor for not protecting the taxpayers from the guards?

[madmusic]

31. Maybe the governor will have the courage now...

Now that he doesn't have to fear them during an election year. Let's hope so.

[ComerPerro]

28. no kidding. They just got it so easy

[JuniperLea]

51. Those are statistics?

:eyes:

[JuniperLea]

50. Where do you get your statistics?

I just ran those figures for someone making $7.50 an hour, using my company's health benefit monthly contributions and it still doesn't even clear $20k.

[ComerPerro]

56. You didn't include overtime.

[JuniperLea]

58. You didn't answer my question

A person would have to work over 55 hours of double-time a month to earn another $10k at minimum wage.

The article doesn't mention how much overtime either. So what you're saying is you are willing to fight this idea tooth and nail based on no information.

Brilliant.

[ComerPerro]

62. that's not what I am saying at all. I was just using an extreme example, as the OP did

[JuniperLea]

66. And still you didn't answer my question

How can anyone take you seriously?

[Name removed]

68. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Marrah_G]

27. ummm

Most Police officers make more then guards, at least here in mass. Both groups still subsidize incomes by working mad hours and lots of extra road details. I would guess any officers in CA that are making 100k are doing so by working lots of over-time. Same with most cops here.

These officers put themselves between you and the worst of our society and they do it without weapons for the most part. And yes they put their own lives on the line every day. These are not nice, gentle, misunderstood people. Sure there are a few exception, but for the most part they are there for a reason and that reason is to keep them from caussing more harm to society.

[madmusic]

34. Yeah, the poor little victims, uh, predators?

A Brutal Prison

NEW YORK, 1999
Quote

"How can you expect for a person to be subjected to that type of cruelty and then expect them to come back out, back into society, and be productive?"
Eddie Dillard, ex-inmate

(CBS) Two years ago, 60 Minutes Correspondent Mike Wallace first reported the story of the nation's largest prison system, California's, and one prison there in particular. Corcoran State Prison was being investigated by the FBI because numerous corrections officers -- prison guards -- were accused of staging inmate fights, sometimes wagering on the outcome and then, when those fights got out of control, of shooting the inmates involved.

Wallace returned to Corcoran recently for a 60 Minutes II. segment to air Wednesday, April 7, at 9PM ET/PT. (Check local listings.) He learned of yet another kind of brutality that California prison guards committed against inmates -- rape. Not by the guards but by other inmates, used by the guards to retaliate against prisoners who had gotten out of line.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1999/04/06/60II/main41867.shtml

[JuniperLea]

47. Starting pay for cops in Los Angeles is under $50k

I don't know one cop in LA that makes $100k! I'll have to email my SWAT buddy and see if he laughs me out of the water...

[Yavin4]

54. You've Obviously Have Never Lived in CA

$100K is barely middle class in CA.

[LeftyMom]

55. Not for guards

Most CA prisons are in the middle of fucking nowhere. $100K is a whole fucking lot of money if you live in Susanville. Hell, even in a relatively spendy place for a prison like Folsom, it's still a damn good living.

[BlooInBloo]

7. (shrug) After the smashing success white folks had with this tactic...

... Why should we be surprised that other groups want to adopt it?

[Vorta]

8. re

everything from spitting to throwing unidentified liquid to biting to scratching to punching to kicking to head-butting to attacks with weapons. There is no analysis of how many of these incidents are really serious assaults,

I would consider having an "unidentified liquid" thrown in my face to be a serious assault, not to mention nasty. I would have little problem with putting such a person in solitary forever or on a chain-gang for assulating a correctional officer or another inmate.

[madmusic]

11. Do you have "little problem" with waterboarding too?

In 1995, a new federal high tech prison in Florence, Colorado, took over the "mission" of Marion and purports to house the "most predatory" prisoners in the U.S. Here, people are kept in nearly total isolation for years, many in soundproof cells. There is little interaction with anyone other than prison staff. Visits, telephone calls, and mail from family and friends are severely restricted, as are educational, recreational, and religious services. The federal model of control units has been adopted by over 40 states throughout the country, often taking the form of supermax, or maxi-maxi prisons.

Although litigation concerning control units has been sporadic, ongoing, and not too promising, there have been successes in the fight against them. In 1989, the women's small-group isolation prison in Lexington, Kentucky, designed specifically for women political prisoners, was closed by legal, political, and moral battles waged by a broad coalition of people. In January 1995, in Madrid v. Gomez, a federal court in California condemned the pattern of brutality and neglect at Pelican Bay Prison and called upon the state to discontinue excessive force and punitive treatment such as cell extractions and shackling prisoners to toilets and called for changes in grossly inadequate medical and mental health care.

The development of control units can be traced to the tumultuous years of the civil rights movement, during which time many activists found themselves in U.S. prisons. We believe this use of isolation stems directly from the brain-washing techniques used during the Korean War. Sensory deprivation as a form of behavior modification was used extensively for imprisoned members of the Black Panther party, members of Black Liberation Army formations, members of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, members of the American Indian Movement, white activists, jail house lawyers, Islamic militants, and prison activists. At one time or another, they all found themselves living in extended isolation, sometimes for years on end. Many political prisoners still live in isolation, not because they have received charges for infractions, but because of who they are and what they believe.

The experiment in solitary confinement expanded throughout the country in the form of supermax prisons--entire prisons that force people to live in complete isolation. Prisoners cannot see or hear another human being unless or until the administration decides that they can. The fastest growing population living in enforced solitude is perhaps youth of color imprisoned as a result of the racist crack-cocaine laws. Most of these youngsters received unconscionably long sentences. Their consequent anger tends to lead them into real or imagined infractions shortly after their imprisonment, resulting in their placement in sensory deprivation supermax prisons.

http://www.sonic.net/~doretk/Issues/98-09%20FALL/solitary.html

[madmusic]

12. a slow, psychological death

Trend toward solitary confinement worries experts

January 9, 1998


NEW YORK (CNN) -- Ramzi Yousef, the man behind the World Trade Center bombing, received one of the longest, harshest sentences in history Thursday, continuing a trend that troubles some human rights activists and corrections experts.

In fact, it could ultimately prove to be harmful to the very society the punishment is meant to protect.

Yousef was sentenced to 240 years plus life in solitary confinement Thursday by Judge Kevin T. Duffy. The judge recommended that Yousef be allowed to see only his lawyers and not be allowed to make phone calls, even to his family.

While many applauded the sentence, David Levin of Prisoners Legal Services objects.

"It's really death by incarceration. You're really putting someone to a slow, psychological death, and I think that is really cruel and unusual punishment," Levin said.

a lot more: http://www.cnn.com/US/9801/09/solitary.confinement/

[madmusic]

13. Memory loss, hallucination, craziness

But doctors who have studied the effect of solitary confinement say it can be harmful on the prisoners.

Dr. Henry Weinstein, a psychiatrist who has studied prisoners in solitary, says they suffered symptoms ranging from "memory loss to severe anxiety to hallucinations to delusions and, under the severest cases of sensory deprivation, people go crazy."

Corrections professionals say they need SuperMax facilities as an incentive for good behavior, and that prisoners understand they can earn their way out into the general population.

But some corrections experts say the trend toward solitary confinement makes their job more dangerous. Such a prisoner, they say, has no reason not to attack, maim or even kill a guard.

What concerns corrections experts and human rights activists alike is that more and more state prisoners begin and end their sentences in solitary confinement.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9801/09/solitary.confinement/#1

[Vorta]

14. What do you have on chain-gangs? I did offer an alternative eom

[madmusic]

16. Is it possible someone might assault a guard just to get outside and work?

Seems like if the inside is that bad, working on even a brutal chain gang could be worth it.

[Marrah_G]

33. that unidentified liquid is....

Urine, Feces, vomit and any combination of things added. Yes it's a very serious assault and most of these men/women have spouses to worry about.

They also seem to enjoy flooding the jails by stopping up thier toilets...... not quite sure why they wanna flood thier own living space.

[madmusic]

36. Did you dig that out of the evidence locker?

You're probably right, at least it is sometimes that, but why is it so much worse now that prisoners are doing this? Why are prisons having to put up mesh wire over the cell bars now? Could it be because these victims are really predators?

[Fierce]

15. I'm not a big fan of the California prison system. However,

speaking generally, I figure if a union can bargain its way up to $100,000 a year, more power to them. Anything union members get, their union has bargained for. It's not a gift.

[madmusic]

17. No, it's extortion.

They control California politics. Everyone fears them.

[Fierce]

41. You must have missed the part where I said "speaking generally."

But, you know, go with it.

[madmusic]

43. It is not their pay that is an issue...

And I have no problem if they can negotiate a better deal. That is not really sacbee's issue either. This editorial is merely one of a long string of stories they did about the union. The real point of the article is its conclusion:

The public would be better served by ad campaigns suggesting real solutions to the current overcrowding mess. That's the key to improving conditions for those who work in California's prisons.

The sacbee knows how much the union has contributed to the state of the current prison crisis. It has done story after story on the issue. The entire system is to the breaking point, and the guard's union contributed to that.

For example:

CA: Prison Law Office: Lawyers Go Behind Bard as Guardians of Prisoner Rights

Lawyers Go Behind Bars as Guardians of Prisoner Rights
By Maura Dolan
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

October 11, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO - They exposed the state's locking up of juvenile offenders for 23 hours at a stretch in cells smeared with blood and feces.

They helped spark an unprecedented federal court takeover of California's prison healthcare system after revealing that prisoners were dying because of medical neglect.

They ended the practice of placing mentally ill prisoners in extreme isolation.

The Prison Law Office, a nonprofit group of lawyers who labor in the shadow of San Quentin Prison, has in recent years scored a string of court victories felt in nearly every corner of California's teeming prisons.

"There is almost no aspect of California corrections, adult or juvenile, that is not subject to a court order, and almost all of those are the result of suits brought by the Prison Law Office," said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

snip

Lance Corcoran, executive vice president of the prison guards' union, complained that taxpayers are bearing the expense.

He said the Prison Law Office has "incredible power" and faulted the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for doing "a very poor job of defending" itself.

more: http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/archives/2005/10/index.html

After reading the OP article again, it is easy to understand how some posters can misunderstand the issue. The article does appear to be anti-union in a way. But this article is only one sentence out of the entire book on the issue. Who appears more progressive, The Prison Law Office or the prison guard union? That's the real question.

A reading of the entire thread should resolve any doubts.

[Fierce]

45. You're right, I fell for the OP's bait (whether it was bait or not).

Your points are well taken.

[madmusic]

53. I regret the thread's title...

Though it is an accurate quote out of the article, it misleads on the real issue.

Better pay and working conditions for the guards would probably result in more humane treatment of the prisoners as well. That's the real issue. The prisons are about to explode, and that's not good for anyone.

[madmusic]

20. Prison Union Thinks It Runs the Capitol

And Why Not, Since Legislators Quake and Turn Tail?
(Apr 8, 2004)

~ By Jill Stewart

When the California prison guard union recently offered to consider lower raises in exchange for certain powers---like a say in which prisons might close---it was a reminder that the union sees the legislature as a mere tool.

It is well to remember that the guards require no more than a GED and simple training, fail to control gangs or raging drug use in certain prisons (indeed, some guards probably help get drugs past the gates) and practice a deafening code of silence to protect guards gone bad.

Forget giving this union a beachhead in management. Rumors that weaker wardens allow the union a bigger role than ordering paper clips is worry enough.

Last year, I called experts nationwide to find out who, exactly, the union had copied. Who dreamed up this disturbing recipe in which 28,000 guards send $60 in monthly dues--in California that's $21 million annually---to union bosses who funnel it to a massive lawyering/lobbying system that meddles in politics having little to do with guards?

I couldn't find a guard union in America like the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Only our legislature so fears this rich union's ability to hector them out of office that most legislators carry out its orders like bag men working for the mob.

http://jillstewart.net/php/issues/issue040804.php

[madmusic]

29. Does this sound like victim or predator?

In California, the prison industry is the fastest growing industry around. In fact, if you want to talk about pure political muscle, there is no lobby quite as strong as the prison lobby. Consider what the prison guard's union has helped to accomplish in the last 20 years. They have increased tenfold the number of inmates in prison, they have increased exponentially the number of prisons, they have backed numerous draconian laws to ensure that more and more people go to prison for longer and longer for doing less and less.

Plenty of you have seen me write about people facing absurd amounts of time for relatively minor offenses, based in part on things they did when they were 16 years old, or things that happened 25 years ago. Now they face life for possession of a rock of cocaine.

snip

In fact, an article today in the LA Times details to what extent the prison guard's union runs this state's prnal system. They choose wardens, they get paid so much money that no one wants to become a supervisor - they have to leave the guard's union and they make less money). They get so much sick time they don't know what to do with it, and now they no longer need doctor's notes when they are suspected of abusing it. Overtime costs have skyrocketed, their pay keeps going up higher than any other public employee, and if they are asked to work a shift due to someone else calling in sick, they get paid overtime, even if they have called in sick themselves.

It is a total scam, and yet, I am more scared of them than I am of anyone else, because if, God forbid, I ever got into their sights as someone they wanted to get, they could get me. Have me put into prison for some trumped up reason, and they can guarantee that you never walk out alive. Their power makes Abu Ghraib look tame by comparison.

http://publicdefenderdude.blogspot.com/2004/05/in-california-prison-industry-is.html

[madinmaryland]

39. On a sidebar here, I think that the whole prison system

has become more of an industry than of a rehabilitation and incarceration facility. There seems to be too much emphasis on growing this "industry" rather than addressing the reasons as to why it is happening. Maybe by elimating mandatory minumums and changing the sentencing guidelines on drug offenses.

:shrug:

[madmusic]

40. And that's how they keep the state right-sided...

Liberal polices and programs can work, and work very well. We can put a lot of this money into prevention rather than building more prisons. A recent http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/06-10-1201.pdf">Washington State study (PDF) proves this. But this prison guard union will have none of it. Down with anything liberal, up with more prisons. There is no compromise. That's why saying this thread is a RW ploy too attack liberals is so ludicrous and ill informed.

[madinmaryland]

42. Its not only the prison guard union.

There is a lot of money to be made in the prison industry and everyone just wants their piece of the pie. The workers are just feeding off this largesse, while the profiteers running these "companies" are making billions.

:grr:

[madmusic]

46. Private prisons profit from “conditions of extreme peril”

California's Controversial Export
— By Tess Bolder/Graphic by Ellen Chu



The Golden State Relocates Prisoners to Out-of-State Corporate Lockups

An unusual group of passengers boarded a flight in California bound for Tennessee on the morning of Friday, November 3. At the airport in Bakersfield, California, 80 inmates in the California corrections system embarked for a private detention facility in western Tennessee; the group was the first to depart in a controversial program aimed at easing the overcrowding in California’s prisons.


Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a declaration of emergency on October 4, stating that crowding in California prisons is so severe that it has created “conditions of extreme peril” for officers and inmates in 29 of the state’s 33 prisons. This move allows for the transfer of inmates out of state without their consent, though the first 80 transfers were voluntary. Under this emergency order, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is planning to transfer a total of 2,260 inmates to privately run prisons in Arizona, Indiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee by March of next year.


When it’s Broke…


California’s penal system is the third largest in the world, behind China and the US federal system as a whole. Since the early 1980s, the state has constructed 21 new facilities, and the inmate population has soared from 25,000 to nearly 173,000.

http://www.brown.edu/Students/INDY/cms/content/view/382/29/

It's a mess. And the prison guard union fights any plan to relieve over crowding if it involves letting anyone out of prison. That includes alternative sentencing, freeing non-violent drug offenders a little early, being less restrictive on technical parole violations, or anything else. The private out of state prisons are loving it.

[SoCalDem]

44. Nothing new.. Every time a union gets a new contract, "stories"

come out in papers that are geared towards the NEXT contract. How? The articles are always about how "overpaid" those greedy union-folks are...and just watch out..next time they will want MORE!"..

The goal here it to break unions wherever possible.

The method is to make everyone else feel anger towards the people who are smart enough/lucky enough to BE in a union..

[madmusic]

49. Sigh. No, that is not the sacbee's intention.

Their beef with the union is that it contributes to dangerous prison conditions and then "whines" about them. The rest of the thread explains it.

The sacbee is a liberal paper and is not anti-union.

[Porcupine]

60. CA prison guards are a force for fascism. Screw 'em.

They pay for multiple propositions on ballots that upgrade more crimes to felonies, restrict probation and parole terms and lengthen sentances. They have spent millions to keep sending people to prison for marijuana possesion despite the voters clear intent to reduce and eliminate such imprisonments.

California BY ITSELF runs the largest prison system in the world larger than China's or Russia's. This is largely the political work of prison guards union. Meanwhile the elementary school down the block is still slightly shabby due to lack of funds and my kids school has half it's classrooms in portable units.

Prison guards have been repeatedly implicated in the rape, murder, abuse and torture of inmates yet the union does everything possible to make investigation of these cases illegal.

I sincerely believe we could swap the positions of the guards and the prisoners in 9/10ths of Californias jails and the population would be safer.

[dubykc]

61. I'm surprised reading through this thread that I didn't see any...

mention of our illustriously horrid three-strikes law that is a huge part of why our prisons are so overcrowded. There is a lot to be done aside from padding the pockets of the guards and their union bosses.

[madmusic]

63. The NRA and the prison guard union were the two major backers of 3 Strikes

That's somewhere up there in one of the articles. How is that related to working conditions and pay?

The NRA painted itself into the same corner the prison guard union did. Be very afraid of crime. Guns = crime, but don't ban guns. Yeah, that's logical. Recruiting is the problem for the union because they deserve more because their job is so dangerous. Who wants to be a guard then?

Neither offer any solution to the prison crisis other than more prisons.

[dubykc]

67. Less crowded prisons actually has a lot to do with working conditions

But I'm not arguing the fact that the prisonguard union has painted themselves into a corner with their recruiting practices , or lack thereof. I am simply saying that without prisoners put away for 60 years for stealing $150 worth of DVDs our prisons wouldn't have nearly the overcrowding they do now.

The entire system is broke, paying the guards exorbitant salaries isn't going to fix it.

[madmusic]

69. I agree 1,000,000,000%!!!!

And if they were really concerned with working condition and pay, that is what they would concentrate on, not passing more laws and filling up the prisons so people do more and more time for less and less.

[regularguy]

70. I wonder how much whiny-ass editorial writers make?

[madmusic]

71. Good question. There might be an email address...

if you want to ask.