This NPR piece on the absolute disaster that is the California Prison-Industrial complex and the corrosive influence of the CCPOA is a must-listen. The text is there now, the audio will be made available later. It really is everything wrong with government wrapped up in one tragic story- undue influence leads to disastrous policies, bloated spending, and compounds human misery while needlessly jacking up the number of incarcerated. I can’t think of anything to make the situation worse.
It is criminal.
MikeJ
This is why you’ll never hold office.
scav
why single out government in the above? Not had time to read it, but I tend to be suspicious because of the word “complex”, which does tend to imply two are tangoing. Govt does tend to get typecast as the cheap slut while big business is just doing what comes naturally to guys.
The Moar You Know
I’m not one for union-bashing, but what the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (a group I’ve bitched about here before) has done to my state is beyond criminal. We spend more on prisons in this state than on colleges, and that is inexcusable.
General Winfield Stuck
I fully expect CA to fold soon and raise the white flag of surrender for Statehood. Congress will then meet in emergency session and decide to split it into two territories with 10 years to get their act together to become again the 50th state and the 51st state. If not, they will be listed on Ebay for auction to highest bidder.
First order of bidness is to ban government by the mob, ie direct referendum.
Ducks
Jado
A couple of PA judges got caught taking kickbacks for sending juveniles to private reform centers for any and all infractions. So the California system could have actual intentional corruption going for it, instead of just the institutional kind. Assuming it DOESN’T have the intentional kind – I don’t know.
You did ask how it could be worse…
gypsy howell
@MikeJ:
FTW
Polish the Guillotines
The only possible silver lining I can see in the dismal cloud that is our current state budget is a forced re-think of the prison system. The budget crisis could provide political cover for prison reform.
I’m hearing much more public discussion about alternatives to incarceration for drug and non-violent offenders, as well as parole reform, and these alternatives appear to be taken more seriously than in the past.
But then, this is California and the politicians here aren’t used to governing.
The Moar You Know
@scav: Jesus, maybe you should have read the linked article. Big business has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
The Grand Panjandrum AKA Americans for America
Soft on crime, John? Well you know they had it coming. You know they can’t be free. Guess mama never told them to be a good boy, not to play with guns.
Michael
Why are you soft on crime, you criminal coddler?
Lock ’em up, and if you can’t throw away the key, hang a record on ’em then they’re young and make stupid mistakes.
After all, nobody ever changes or grows up, so you may as well set the tone for their lives when they’re in their late teens or early 20s….
Zifnab
How is it that the same state that legalized medical marijuana will throw you in jail for life if you get caught three times in a row stealing a bike?
It’s utter madness.
For those people who poo-poo things like the filibuster and the bicameral Congress and all those obnoxious checks and balances that make passing any legislation like pulling teeth with greased gloves, I give you Exhibit C(alifornia) as a state where it’s too good damn easy to pass anything.
Calouste
California has almost 15 times as many inmates as those god-forsaken, drug-infested, gay-marrying Netherlands, which has about half the population.
The Netherlands’ problem at the moment is overcapacity in their government-run prison system. The solutions proposed are:
1) Close prisons.
2) Rent space out to neighboring countries with stricter drug laws.
3) Petition the Obama administration to really start with the investigations of the Bush administration and send the perpetrators to the War Crimes tribunal in the Hague.
Objections have been raised against the last option however, as there are fears that this will more than exhaust the existing spare capacity.
ninerdave
Can be said about most government from the local to the federal level. Until ya take the money out of government it will be this way.
Until then I’ll enjoy CCPOA shitting all over my state.
joes527
@General Winfield Stuck: So the problem with all the plans to “fix” California is that they assume that the brokenness of the government is somehow upsetting to the population.
Unfortunately a high enough proportion of the population subscribes to “I’ve got mine, so everyone else can just fuck off” theory of how government is supposed to work that if California were to have a constitutional convention, or break into 2 new states, or do anything that involves re-formulating the government, then chances are high they (we) would manage to end up with something worse than what we have now.
The only way that the general population would care enough about responsible government to be willing to work for it would be if police protection totally broke down. (No, not in Hawthorne. In Bel Air)
Even then, the fix would probably be to round up all the illegal immigrants and start gassing them.
Roger Moore
To be fair, they got a lot of help along the way. They may have bought off most of the politicians in the state, but they can only do that as long as those politicians are willing to take their money. And the voters did a lot of damage themselves by voting for any ballot measure that promises to be tough on crime no matter how expensive. A situation as bad as California’s is never going to be the result of a single cause. It takes a lot of effort to screw things up that badly.
Linkmeister
@General Winfield Stuck: Ahem. Hawai’i is already the 50th state. Unless you’re saying that we take away statehood, thus reducing the number of states to 49 and we drop down a number.
Jeebus, a good ten percent of our tourism marketing includes “Hawai’i, the 50th State.” Man, we can’t afford to change all that! Think of changes to your company letterhead when HQ moves!
WyldPirate
Both California and the US could go a long way towards solving it’s penal and justice system problems (5% of the world’s population and 20% of the world’s incarcerated)–as well as other problems– by legalizing cannabis at a minimum and decriminalizing the use of harder drugs.
We never learn from past mistakes and failures, though.
General Winfield Stuck
@Linkmeister:
I see the quandry. How bout this. Hawaii stays #50 and we make the two new North and South CA numbers 51 and 52. Then retire or leave blank the 31st state CA currently is.
Why? cause 31 is the reverse of 13. Bad Karma.
freelancer
Tried to post an OT comment about this, but WP ate my fucking comment again. So I posted it at my site. (Sorry for the blogwhoring, but FYWP)
forgetthisnoise.blogspot.com/2009/08/wingnut-prosecuter-vs-indian-willy.html
NJ GOP candidate for governor running on record as US Attorney, part of which he boasts about Terror Prosecutions.
NPR’s This American Life completely destroys the one case he and many call the strongest terror prosecution after 9/11.
beltane
@Calouste: It’s a sad thought that the Dutch inmates probably have it better than a lot of law abiding Americans.
joes527
@General Winfield Stuck: Nah They’d do it like the freeway offramps. California del Norte would be the 31a-st state and California del Sur would be the 31b-st state
cleek
two states
we want two states
Linkmeister
@General Winfield Stuck: Hey! That’s creative! Then we could offer discounts on statehood: “Come be #31! Puerto Rico, come on down!”
Well, maybe not.
lutton
leverage that with the ‘drug’ war…
also, outsourcing administration of civil justice is wrong…the state should administer all justice from ‘Law and Order’ to incarceration and parole/probation.
handy
I’m not your neighbor you Bakersfield trash
scav
@The Moar You Know: Which is why I explcitly voiced it as a suspicion. The point still holds. Govt, and unions more importantly, are cast as sluts for what is held as natural or even meritorious in business.
Tax Analyst
Here in California our criminal justice system is operated strictly on a fear-based platform. One awful, heinous crime is committed and either the legislature enacts a new draconian measure mandating extremely lengthy mandatory sentences, and/or some “Citizen’s group” gets some equally extreme draconian bill onto the ballot. It doesn’t matter which, because very few of our elected officials have the spine to stand up and say any of this is a bad idea that won’t solve the situation but will eventually cost a fortune and probably end up being totally counter-productive. And they will never vote to repeal any of these laws either. And any politician who stands up against these types of initiatives will be publicly pilloried for doing so – probably subjected to a Recall attempt as well. And woe to any Parole Board member who lets any con who was ever convicted of a violent crime free, either if it was 50 years ago and they are now 75 years old and 100% bed-ridden. It won’t change because too many people believe in the type of “Blood Justice” that exists in places like the Middle East (except here you’re not allowed to pay “blood money” to walk away from the punishment). When I read of the sentencing in places like Sweden or Norway for serious crimes my first thought is sometimes, “Gee, that’s very lenient”, but then I realize its not so much their leniency, it’s the harshness we’ve built into our own penal system.
Yes, there are crimes and criminals for which extremely long or forever sentences are almost certainly appropriate. But unless the goal is strictly to punish no matter what the eventual cost or result of such a policy might be I think it would behoove us to reconsider some of these laws and sentencing mandates.
I’ll be pretty surprised if that actually happens, though.
Rick DuPuis
The CA Corrections Officers association is dispicable and gives unions a bad name. But overall, this is another example of conservatism destroying this once-great state.
Grumpy Code Monkey
They could have Texas’ enthusiasm for executing kids and retarded people.
DougJ
I just listened to it too.
PeakVT
I give you Exhibit C(alifornia) as a state where it’s too good damn easy to pass anything.
Yeah, except that the three strikes law was passed by referendum not by the legislature.
linda
I can’t think of anything to make the situation worse.
i can. refusal to do anything about it.
The Grand Panjandrum AKA Americans for America
OT: Speaking of CA. It looks like The Gays have destroyed another marriage:
But he doesn’t dislike gays and lesbians, he just thinks they should sit in the back of the bus and be happy they live in a free country.
Dave C
@cleek:
Who is we, Kemosabe? :)
gypsy howell
@The Grand Panjandrum AKA Americans for America:
Wouldn’t you kind of wonder about a spouse whose whole life is wrapped up in preventing gay marriage?
Gotta be some serious issues there.
Makewi
Sure this is an example of how the government is bad, but you shouldn’t think of things like this when you think about health care reform. Because of the hope, and the change!
YES THEY WILL! (and you’ll take it b***h)
Roger Moore
@PeakVT:
That’s exactly the point. Those measures pass much to easily because they bypass the roadblocks present in the normal legislative process. Not to mention that initiatives are written by one side of the issue with none of the negotiated give and take that you see in legislatures.
cbear
@Makewi: fuck off.
Halteclere
@Makewi:
For every anecdote you come up with that says government is bad, I’ll come up with a dozen that says it is good. Starting with:
1) Your household grey water not contaminating the fresh water.
2) The plumbing in your house preventing sewer gas from escaping into the house
3) The plumbing in your house properly draining
4) The treatment of your foul refuse
5) Proper electrical grounding to minimize surges from destroying your electronics.
6) GFCI outlets in bathrooms and kitchens
7) No lead in your paint
8) No lead in your plumbing
9) No asbestos in your ductwork
10) % volume of HVAC air exchange in your house to keep you from asphyxiating
11) The number of exits in a house in case of a fire.
12) No more balloon framing (i.e. chimney flues).
13) Rated materials so your roof doesn’t collapse during a large snow storm
(yea, a baker’s dozen)
I could go on and on about all the governmental regulations in home building that is beneficial, and which is always overlooked by the “government is evil” crowd. There are so many more places to look for good government examples.
Augustine
State of my birth is FUBAR +1
And I think you’re wrong about 2 states.
It should be LosAngelo, SanFranistan, and the Inland Empire (anchored by San Diego)
Makewi
@Halteclere:
Hey, tell it to John. He’s the one that posted this obvious lie about an instance of the government being bad.
scav
Makewi, blah blah blah. Govts. like all organizations can go overboard.
Makewi
scav
Right, just not on healthcare. On that one it will be all puppies and rainbows.
As opposed to those greedy insurance companies and the evil tonsil stealing, foot amputating doctors. It’s a well known fact that insurance company executives and doctors like to suck the marrow from puppies bones while the puppies are still alive. It’s sick.
bizzle
@Augustine: Why does San Diego deserve that fate?
The Moar You Know
@Makewi: Boy, you are my kind of guy. You walk into a room and, as if by instinct, know exactly the right thing to say to piss everyone off in it. There’s a bar in East County, here in San Diego, I wanna take you to. We’ll both probably end up in the ER afterwards, but it will be so worth it.
Polish the Guillotines
@Augustine: First let’s get the Navy back to SanFranistan from Puerto Diego.
Otherwise, that’s about the right way to slice it and dice it. Of course, we could sell Crescent City to Oregon for a few bucks while we’re at it.
The Moar You Know
@bizzle: I was going to ask the same question. The city is barely blue now. We’ve been moving in the right (left) direction for years. I don’t want to be living in the capital city of Redneckistan. Give the capital to Fresno. It’s a shithole and they could probably use the cash.
arguingwithsignposts
How about letting it fester. I had a friend who had to spend time in a “for-profit” jail in Texas way back in the day (early 90s). What has been done to our country in the name of “profit” is tragic. If I weren’t somewhat “compassionate,” I’d hope they all burn in hell. I mean that.
Kyle
MakeWeeWee, you are either deliberately obtuse or staggeringly narrow-minded, and not even entertaining. Your desperation is showing as you refute ridiculous straw-man arguments dredged from the sewer of your fevered imagination.
joes527
@Polish the Guillotines:
Not. Gonna. Happen.
PeakVT
@Roger Moore: Well, Zinfab didn’t mention the referendum process, just the legislature.
Plus, what I think people have been poo-pooing is self-imposed super-majority rule in a chamber that is wildly gerrymandered. That isn’t a check; it’s a complete roadblock.
demimondian
@Linkmeister: Revoke Hawaii’s statehood? Great idea! It would have the advantage of taking care of any doubt about the birthers, after all.
Polish the Guillotines
@joes527: I know. Wishful thinking.
General Winfield Stuck
Throw in the OC and give Redneckistan sovereignty, then shell it because we can.
And yes, my knowledge of Californy is limited.
Midnight Marauder
@Makewi:
As opposed to those greedy insurance companies and the evil tonsil stealing, foot amputating doctors. It’s a well known fact that insurance company executives and doctors like to suck the marrow from puppies bones while the puppies are still alive. It’s sick.
What the fuck are you even saying right here, son? Seriously. What greater point are you attempting to articulate?
Chad N Freude
@Makewi:
California government has been swirling down the drain for years [decades] due to a dysfunctional legislature and a consitutional provision that says any evildoer/idiot/corporation/cartel/church that can persuade, by mega-advertising blitzes, more than 50% of voters (not all citizens, just people who can be persuaded to come out for elections) to vote in favor of a proposition that the evildoer/idiot/corporation/cartel/church feels will benefit him/it financially or morally, regardless of its overall effect on the citizenry and state finances.
Health care reform is just like that, right?
Frank Sobotka
I’m a union guy. Always have been, always will be. But the CCPOA is evil. My solidarity does not extend to them.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
No thanks, we’ll pass on that. As it is there are quite a few Pelican Bay prison guards here in south Oregon. One friend lives in Cave Junction, Oregon and he commutes the 100+ miles to and from work every day. Several of my customers are guards there (PB) and I can assure you that they are very well paid. One of their favorite things for them is overtime, which they absolutely live for as it is included in the calculation of their retirements.
One other thing is that every single one of them are, without exception, rabid wingnuts. Oh do they ever hate Obama and they tell this DFH about it every time we talk about computer service. They hate my politics (and love to let me know that) but love me fixing their computers. I have no problem firing their nonsense back in their faces as they know I don’t need their business. Haven’t lost one yet…lol
I am a union supporter but the CCPOA gives unions a bad name.
Darkrose
@Augustine:
Can Sacramento go with SanFranistan? Please?
Riggsveda
We stopped pretending that we were interested in rehabilitation in the 70s. Sounded too “soft”. We wanted red meat and revenge. We got it, all right. When you treat God’s creatures like furniture–like furniture animated with evil intent by Satan himself–this is what you get. People give up when others give up on them. When all hope of help is wiped away, human beings may believe they really aren’t human. When you create an Inferno and take pleasure in knowing people are tormented in it, the shit always rolls uphill, sooner or later.
slippytoad
@Riggsveda: A-fucking-men to that. An eye for an eye and the whole world is blind.
Surabaya Stew
A very sobering article that all was; what a sorry waste of human potential! The point about the self-serving public union largely responsible for this disaster unfortunately doesn’t surprise me. The only thing that does surprise is finding out is finding that there is a worse bunch of crooks and sadists in Cali than in the New York State correctional system. Trust me, these bastards (and wingnuts) in upstate NY have been actively promoting more prisons for their districts for years now, oblivious to the fact that any increased economic activity from a new prison is more than offset by the higher state taxes required to run the facility! (Its been like this at least ever since the Rockefeller drug laws of the 70’s.)
What is amusing is to see so many “union supporters” on this thread decry the “abuse” that this particular union partakes in, and somehow not make the connection between it and other corrupt public sector unions. Weren’t there just a number of threads on overbearing and zealous police officers in the aftermath of the Gates affair? Yet how many pointed out that the vast majority of police in the USA are unionized and uninterested in reducing crime? Couldn’t this be a possible explanation of their self-serving and unconstitutional actions towards the public at large?
I could list many other examples of public sector unions and corruption (and certainly others here can also). The fact is, unions are just as prone to rot and evil as any government or corporation! Anybody thinking that unions are a long-term solution to our problems is not looking closely at the ones we already have.
Augustine
@bizzle:
@Darkrose:
I’m prepared to make a non-binding offer to trade Sacramento, Davis, and player to be named later to SanFranistan in exchange for keeping Molesto and Turlock.
San Diego, sorry: Brian Bilbray is not forgiven. La Jolla and Mission Beach can have federal district status…
mclaren
Like a slow-motion film of a 747 airliner crash, the collapse of California simultaneously fascinates and repulses. There is of course no sign of a collective return to sanity in California: the recent state budget compromise got held up for weeks because the population of the state is apparently terrified that some harmless hippies tossed in Folsom for 20 years for toking some weed might be let out of prison early.
npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111843426
Everyone says it can’t get any worse, which remains a sure
sign that the real horror has scarcely begun. The next step
in the self-destructive spiral of California’s lunacy? The
felonization of completely harmless activities. Right on cue,
we’re now seeing that with the criminalization of the herb
salvia divinorum and the landmark federal prosecution of a
college kid for modifying a gaming console to play backup
copies of games.
arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/08/modder-arrest-a-reminder-that-most-console-hacks-are-illegal.ars
When the feds start prosecuting for crimes, the states ramp up prosecutions even more avidly. So look forward to countless California SWAT teams breaking down the doors of high-school kids and dragging them away in leg irons and shackles and trying them as adults and sentencing them to 20 years or 30 years or 50 years in California state prison for phoney pseudocrimes like modding their gaming consoles to play a duped disc of Halo 2.
Very soon after that, we’ll see cops smashing down doors with battering rams because teenagers are downloading mp3s or movies on bittorrent, or making rips of DVDs they’re rented from Netflix. The California prison population has barely begun to skyrocket. Wait till you see the flood of new convicts, the deluge of new pseudo-crimes, all prosecuted in the name of “getting tough” and “showing zero tolerance” and “making an example.”
In reality, of course, with global warming parching CA’s
central valley and Peak Oil driving CA’s freeway-based cities
into unsustainability, the CA prison system is the only viable
industry left in the state. So look for it to gobble up the entire CA economy as hi tech manufacturing flees to Asia and CA’s farming economy withers and dies courtesy of the vanishing Sierra Nevada snow pack runoff.
California now spends more on prisons than on its university system. No surprise. What good are universities today? All the white-collar jobs are getting shipped overseas as fast as the internet connections can get set up. Graphic designers, programmers, biochmeists, materials scientists, physicists, mathematicians — you can hire ’em for $7 an hour in China. Why waste your money on American graduates?
Nobody here seems to get it. John Cole rhapsodizes about the alleged magnificence of San Diego. I lived in Scam Dayglo for 27 years, it’s a hellhole beyond compare, the worst of the worst. If California is the sphincter of the United States, San Diego is the nadir of California, the very lowest point, the ultimate slime pit. Toxic beaches closed most of the year due to sewage spills from Mexico, rampant gang violence from the Mexican drug cartels, a desolate lunar landscape parched by global warming and polluted by smog so thick you can cut it with a knife, clogged freeways and 100-mile-plus commutes in a highway system designed for 1/10 the population and 39-cent-per-gallon gasoline prices, a crackpot conservative fringe lunatic political culture in Southern California that gave us Richard Nixon and Egil Krogh and H. R. Haldeman and Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson and Duncan Shepard, street gangs that make the streets unlivable after dark, and and above all a master-slave economy that depends on grinding dirt-poor illegal immigrants from Mexico into the ground to keep all those mom-and-pop small businesses running. Without illegals, San Diego’s economy would collapse in a week. Every fast food franchise, every painting contractor, every landscaper, every window glass business, every quickie oil change franchise, every small grocery store you walk into in San Diego (and Southern California) is staffed by illegals who make a fraction of minimum wage and live in constant fear that the employer will call the INS if they step out of line.
And how do you keep a master-slave economy running?
There’s only one way. You crack the whip, hard. And what better way to terrorize your slaves than with the world’s most savagely sadistic prison system?
John Cole and the rest of you just don’t understand California. I lived there for nearly 30 years, so I know how that hellhole works. Just like a medieval slave pit, you need plenty of tortures and plenty of torturers to keep the slaves in line. Then it works. It’s highly lucrative, provided you can scare the piss out of the vast slave population that keeps your economy going. That’s what the California prison system’s all about. That’s why it’s going to get worse — much worse, not better.
Oh, and John Cole? The next time you’re in San Diego, don’t go out after 10 pm at night. The bad cops all get put on the graveyard shift and they wolfpack at night. Get stopped at 10 pm even if you’re white and middle class, and your life isn’t worth a dime. Police in San Diego routinely write up homicides as NHI — “No Humans Involved.” Meaning the dead person was a hooker, or a transient, or non-white. Seriously. If you visit San Diego, wear a bulletproof vest, never go out after dark, and never ever ever drive you car anywhere near Imperial Beach or Southeast San Diego, let alone infernos like San Ysidro. And be prepared for traffic stops with muggers with badges hauling you out even if you’re white and middle-class and driving an expesive car and gong through your pockets and tearing apart your car and running sniffer dogs through your trunk. And you had better keep your eyes on the ground and do nothing but mumble “Yessir,” and “Thank you very much, sir,” or you’ll be beaten and tased and shot to death and you’ll wind up as a minor news item in the back pages of the San Diego Union-Tribune with the brief description “Controlled substance and unregistered firearm found on suspect dead in a police shooting.” Yes, those San Diego cops love to plant cold pieces and bags of stuff that mysteriously went missing from the evidence lockup on anyone who gives them lip. In San Diego, “contempt of cop” is a capital crime with no appeal.
mclaren
CORRECTION: Should be Duncan Hunter above, Orange county’s craziest congressman.
blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/main/duncan-hunter-dick-nixon-and-g/
When there were no cheesy Z-grade sci fi movies on Channel 9 or Channel 11, my friends and I in San Diego used to put on CSPAN and watch Duncan Hunter scream and rave and froth about black helicopters and the evil conspiracy of the number of the beast on supermarket bar codes to an empty chamber in the house of representatives. Pure Southern California craziness, truly tasty insanity — genuinely gourmet dementia. A perfect epitome of the entire Southern California political tradition going all the way back to Ronald “If it takes a blood bath, let’s get it over with” (2 months before the Kent State massacre) Reagan and “Mr. San Diego of the Century” C. Arnholt Smith who got indicted for and convicted of fraud a month after the received that award.
Turgidson
Cole: “I can’t think of anything to make the situation worse.”
Privatization. Imagine Blackwater in charge of running prisons. I saw a pretty appalling documentary on almost this very scenario, which is occurring in some areas, not long ago. If I remember the name of it, I’ll post it.
That’s not to say California’s prison system isn’t a total abomination (it is, big time). Just that it probably can still get worse if you put some unaccountable corporatist thugs in charge.
Pug
Folsom was built to hold 1,800 inmates. It now houses 4,427.
I actually have a loved one who spent some time in that piece of shit. Thank God he is one of the 24% who didn’t return.
Pug
I forgot to say God bless Johnny Cash.
jenniebee
I can see how a union of 45,000 members making $7,000,000,000 total a year in salary and benefits could make it difficult to change things (although nothing in that report suggested that anybody wanted to change anything other than lowering the officers’ salaries – I didn’t hear anything about taking out the 3-strikes law, without which this is still a problem), but I don’t get how (even unionized) 2,600 people making an average of $15,000 a year could take the whole state of California anyplace it didn’t already want to go. The “three strikes” nonsense isn’t something that California got duped into by some clever, dastardly union, it’s exactly the sort of feel-good short-term thinking policy that California’s referendum system lends itself to anytime the state or country gets into a “tough on crime” mood. At about the same time as Cali was passing 3-strikes, I remember a congresscritter being quoted anonymously saying that the mood in the House at the time was so anti-crime that if someone proposed a bill to string barbed wire around the ankles of jaywalkers, it’d probably pass.
As a note, the reporter is having fun playing with numbers. She gives you an annual salary from 20 years ago and then compares that to combined salary and benefits aggregated for all members today. If you break the numbers down, the guards are certainly doing better than before, but the average cost of employment (70% of 10B divided by 45K) is around $155,000, which includes benefits, and even that’s high because the budget figure was for all personnel, not just the ones in the union. Rule of thumb, figure about half that is the actual salary, so $75K average, and given that 10% making 100K+, probably a median around $60-$65K, which doesn’t sound that outrageous to me for a seasoned law enforcement officer working in an overcrowded prison.
Did the union ride the voters’ Dirty Harry love to better salaries? Could you blame them if they did (would you work Fulsom at 2x capacity for $15K a year?) Were the union’s interests aligned with get-tough-on-crime politcs? Definitely, but that’s not the same as causing those policies to come into effect. There are probably more than a few assholes who work for the union who are aware that more imprisonment = more guards, and bravo to them for figuring out what observers of law enforcement have only been talking about constantly for the last two hundred fucking years. Victorians wrote extensively about the policing paradox. Congrats to NPR for just now realizing that – news flash – crime (and punishment) are cops’ raison d’etre.
Apologies for the long comment.