9486 in the collection
Death Row Cost Overrun: $40 million
California's prison system is already a big-ticket item, representing about 10 percent of roughly $100 billion general fund spending. And when one considers how incarcerated people are treated, without dignity or opportunities for rehabilitation, we have to ask what is going on here? For starters, why does the US have such a high incarceration rate?
by Matthew Yi
The cost of new housing for San Quentin State Prison's growing number of Death Row inmates will exceed estimates by nearly $40 million, and the compound could run out of space soon after it is completed, according to a state auditor's report released Tuesday.
The auditor's new $395.5 million price tag for the project, which is expected to be completed by 2011, is new bad news for a state facing billions of dollars in budget shortfalls. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrat-controlled Legislature are still trying to hammer out a spending plan for the fiscal year that began nearly a month ago.
California's prison system is already a big-ticket item, representing about 10 percent of roughly $100 billion general fund spending. And with severe inmate overcrowding and claims of inadequate health care for prisoners, a federal receiver appointed by a judge in 2006 has asked the Legislature for an additional $7 billion to get the prison system to run adequately.
"This is a giant black hole," said Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, chairwoman of the Senate public safety committee. "It's a never-ending gravitational force that'll continue to suck away money that should be spent on local government, education, health and human services and higher education."
Seth Unger, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the latest figures for the San Quentin project are estimates at best. He added that the report "does validate that California needs a newly constructed, modern facility to house our condemned inmate population."
The new complex would house a maximum of 1,152 inmates, providing adequate capacity until 2035 if most inmates are housed two per cell, the report said. But if plans for double-celling are challenged in court and the state loses, San Quentin could run out of space in three years.
"We would simply go back to square one after spending all this money," said Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, whose district includes San Quentin.
Since the state Legislature reinstated the death penalty in 1977, there have been 14 inmates executed, starting with Robert Alton Harris in 1992, while the number of condemned inmates has risen steadily to the current number at 674.
The vast majority of those prisoners - 635 - are held at San Quentin; 15 are held at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, and the rest are being held near courthouses, in long-term medical care facilities or in other states.
Plans for new housing for San Quentin's Death Row inmates got its initial boost five years ago when state prison officials requested $220 million and the state Legislature approved the spending. New facilities were needed, prison officials said, because the three existing units - built in 1930, 1934 and 1960 - don't meet the state's standard for maximum-security facilities.
Prison officials later said construction costs would be far greater as a result of rising prices of construction materials, design changes and unforeseen problems such as cleaning up contaminated soil.
The corrections department also reduced the number of housing units from eight to six, which reduced the number of cells from 1,024 to 768. Despite the smaller size of the complex, the corrections department placed its latest construction cost estimate at $356 million, with the funds to be raised by selling lease-revenue bonds.
California's Public Works Board would borrow the money to build the facilities and lease the building to the corrections department, whose rent payment would be used to repay the bond debt.
But the state auditor concluded that prison officials underestimated the cost of construction by nearly $40 million. In addition, the report said operating costs for the facility would require an additional $1.2 billion over 20 years.
"It looks very, very likely that we would be forced to build additional facilities whether we like it or not," Huffman said. "Frankly, I think we ought to be stepping back and taking a look at all of our alternatives in a comprehensive way."
Huffman argued that the state should consider housing Death Row inmates in other areas of the state, given its plans to build more prisons.
Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, said he has little doubt that the corrections department has underestimated the cost of building the new housing units. But the lawmaker, who supports death penalty, said the San Quentin project is the kind of prison infrastructure work that the state has ignored too long.
"Costs are going up because we don't pay attention to our prisons on a regular basis," Spitzer said. "We've seen prisons largely as a place where you send people and don't think about them. Now, the chicken's come home to roost."
Condemned in California
1,152
Inmate capacity in planned new Death Row housing at San Quentin
674
Number of California's condemned inmates
635
Death Row inmates at San Quentin State Prison
14
California inmates executed since death penalty reinstated in 1977
3
Years until new Death Row housing is expected to be completed
Source: Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
Death Row plans
Read more about plans for new Death Row housing at San Quentin State Prison at links.sfgate.com/ZEIK.
E-mail Matthew Yi at myi@sfchronicle.com.
— Matthew Yi
San Francisco Chronicle
2008-07-30
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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