Softer California three-strikes law would save on older inmates

A ballot measure aimed at California's infamous "three strikes" sentencing law may be an opportunity for the state to put a dent in one problem besetting prison officials across the country: the high cost of aging inmates.

Under three strikes, a person convicted of a felony in California who has two or more prior convictions for certain offenses must be sentenced to at least 25-years-to-life in state prison, even if the third offense is nonviolent.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other prison-reform advocates point to three-strikes laws (California's was passed in 1994) as the prime driver for an increase in older inmates. Older prisoners are less likely to re-offend, advocates argue, and many can be safely released to ease prison overcrowding.

Yet attempts to reform three strikes in California have stalled both in the legislature and at the ballot box.

Even with a court order, and in a tough budget climate, where reducing the prison population could bring savings, success for reformers in November is far from assured.

"Three strikes has sort of become a sacred cow, sort of this litmus test on 'how law and order are you' in California," said Gloria Romero, the former state Senate majority leader whose 2006 bill to relax three strikes died awaiting a floor vote in her own chamber.

Greg Totten, the district attorney in Ventura County, nearly 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles, said the vast majority of state prosecutors will likely oppose any softening of three strikes.

"The advocates of reform don't want to talk about the crime and the criminal," said Totten, who opposes reform. "You see an aging prisoner, as they get older they probably look a little more sympathetic, a little less threatening."

Almost 125,000 prisoners around the country are 55 and older. At $68,000 per year, they cost the state nearly twice as much to house as younger prisoners, according to a recent ACLU study, largely because of higher medical costs associated with care later in life. More than 14,000 of those inmates are in California prisons.

Prison overcrowding -- and the unconstitutional conditions it creates -- has been litigated in California for over 20 years. In response to a U.S. Supreme Court directive last year to cut the state inmate population by over 30,000 inmates, California began a massive shifting of responsibility and funding for low-level offenders to county jails from state prisons, a process known in California as realignment.

The lower number of incoming prisoners, combined with current inmates being paroled per usual, brought down the number of inmates in state prisons from an estimated 144,000 at the time of the high court ruling to 121,129 in June 2012, according to the state Department of Corrections. That is still roughly 55 percent over the capacity of California's 33 prisons.

Read More: Terra News