SACRAMENTO - When a judge put Robert Sillen in charge of healthcare in California prisons, the medical staff was vastly underpaid. Software used to track the medical histories of inmates 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 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's election in 2003.
The prison population has grown by 8 percent since then, to more than 173,000 inmates. But the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's budget has exploded by 79 percent to $8.5 billion and is expected to top $10 billion next year.
Prison spending is greater than that of any other major program except public schools and healthcare for the poor. The nonpartisan legislative analyst's office projects 6 percent annual increases in prison spending for the next five years as a new prison and dozens of building additions are constructed and opened.
The causes of the department's fiscal metastasis are the same ones that plague many parts of California's $145 billion state budget: spending set at the ballot box and in the courts; bureaucratic waste, failed efforts to help inmates stay away from crime after their release; and more than a decade of neglect in construction, repairs, and other improvements.
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Voters, too, have contributed to the burgeoning budget, notably by approving the "three strikes" initiative in 1994 authorizing life imprisonment for repeat felons and "Jessica's Law" in November 2006. The latter measure restricts where released sex offenders can live and requires that they be tracked by satellite for life.
Over time, the cost of tracking paroled offenders could grow to $100 million or more, the state says.
Another initiative is being readied for the ballot next year by the authors of last year's measure: Sharon and George Runner, two Republican lawmakers from Lancaster. The proposed initiative would require the state to spend nearly $1 billion to combat gang crimes and lengthen some prison sentences.
"People are trying to do one-upmanship to claim, 'I'm tough on crime,' and it has a cost to it," said Senator Mike Machado, a Democrat who oversees the corrections portion of the state budget.
A report by the inspector general in February found that the corrections department repeatedly failed to correct problems that had been identified in studies the department commissioned.
Department officials admitted this month that as many as 33,000 prisoners might be scheduled to remain behind bars longer than they were supposed to because corrections officials miscalculated their sentences. The longer stays could be costing the state nearly $26 million extra each year.
There is little sign that the growth in the prisons budget will abate any time soon. Prison healthcare spending has increased 263 percent since 2000, to $2.1 billion a year, and Sillen predicted that he would raise it by as much as $500 million for the fiscal year that begins in July.
