Has Proposition 36 Relieved Prison Overcrowding in California’s Prisons?

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Literature review
Data, Methodology and Discussion of the Finding
Summary, Conclusion and Implication
Areas for Further Research
References

Introduction

Since time immemorial drugs and drugs, trafficking has been the most challenging crime for many authorities or governments around the world to fight irrespective of stringent laws and regulations having been enacted to curb the vice. In almost all countries, anti-drug registrations are very well enacted and enforced. However, the laws have continued to be violated irrespective of the latter and the dire consequences that come with the violation in terms of severe punishment attached to being convicted with drug offenses. In many parts of the United States of America, drug offenses are the most common of all offenses.

According to the Drug policy alliance (March 2006), one out of every 31 people in the United States of America was found to be in imprisonment, close to 90% of the prisoners having been convicted and charged with drug-related offenses (either sellers or simply in possession of illicit drugs). Consequently, this has caused the number of prisoners to increase massively, the result of which has been the overcrowding crises in the state’s prisons, especially in California.

The overcrowding has since degenerated into a big crisis with inmates being forced to live in dangerous and inhumane conditions that greatly infringe on human rights (Curb Amicus, 2005). As a result, fast and effective measures require to be put in place to curb this problem.

Although many strategies have been proposed to reduce this congestion which includes and is not limited to the parole reforms, and the infamous AB 900 by the states authorities, The most comprehensive strategy to reduce the overcrowding in California’s prisons has been the introduction of the California proposition 36 a policy that was put through a referendum on 7th of November 2000, approved through a majority votes and started being implemented on the 1st of July 2001 (Curb Amicus 2005, Hardy et al., 2005).

The policy’s main aim was to act as an alternative to imprisonment for the nonviolent first and second offenders convicted of drug-related offenses by putting them under a community-based treatment and rehabilitation program (Prop 36. 2001).

The proponents of this proposition believe that it is the most effective policy to ease congestion in the state’s prisons via a substantial reduction in the number of people being sent to prison as well as bringing to an end the practicing of the uncelebrated sentencing policies typically the three-strike laws and tough on crime (Prop 36. 2001, Curb Amicus 2005). The purpose of this thesis, therefore, is to find out whether the enactment and implementation of California’s proposition 36 had helped California to do away with overcrowding in the state’s prisons and jails eight years since its inception.

Literature review

The most outstanding laws reform in the state of California has been documented as the introduction of the famous proposition 36 in 2000. The reforms were established as a review of California’s drugs laws so that a certain category of drug offenders will be taken through a community-based treatment instead of being incarcerated or rather taken to prison or the latter being put under direct court probation/ supervision without necessarily being put via drug treatment (Douglas Longshore et al, 2004, Prop 36. 2001).

Classification of offenses

According to Prop 36 (2001), the current California laws classify crimes into three main categories which include felonies, misdemeanours and infractions. The law regards felonies as the most serious of all crimes. Individuals who are convicted of felonies can thus be sentenced to incarceration in a state’s prison or county jail, fined, or put under supervision on country community-based probation. However, there are mainly two classifications of felonies which mean that a felony can either be violent or nonviolent according to the current laws of California.

In circumstances where an individual is convicted for a second successive time of having committed a serious or violent crime, a sentencing policy which the state’s law refers to “three strikes and you are out” sentencing policy is applied which mean therefore that the offenders’ jail term is elongated. At time the offenders’ sentence can even be lengthened to between 25 and life incarceration depending on the extent of the seriousness of the felony committed by the convict.

On the other hand, misdemeanours are regarded by the state’s law as being of less intensity (California’s penal code, Prop 36. (2001), An individual convicted of having committed a misdemeanour can be sentenced to serve a rather shot jail term, fined or even released to the community on certain court conditions and without necessarily being put under any form of probation whatsoever. Infractions on the other hand are the violations of creation codes of conduct such as the traffic rules. Violators of such rules cannot be sentenced to state prison or jails, but the law only offers an option of a fine for such offenders. (California’s penal code, Prop 36. 2001)

According to the law of the states, it is illegal and a crime for an individual to be in direct or indirectly in possession of, make use of, or to be intoxicated by an illicit drug such as marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine, while the law regards to some drugs offenses as felonies, others are classified as a misdemeanour (California’s penal code, prop 36.2001). Similarly, the extent of the punitive measures taken against a drug offender convicted by the court is determined by the drug that an individual is found with.

However, the law of the United States of America categorizes drug offenses as nonviolent of course with exception of some circumstances, especially where an individual act under the influence of a substance to commit a violent crime. In addition, individuals who are convicted by the state’s criminal justice system of handling drugs with an intention of selling are dealt with more harshly by law than those who are found as simply drug users according to the current drug policies in the state of California.

The Effect of California’s Prop 36 on States Prisons Overcrowding

It is the increase in the abuse of drug abuse and the subsequent rise in the number of individuals being convicted and imprisoned for drugs allied reasons that provoked the establishment of proposition 36.

The Aims of California’s Proposition 36

The objectives of the policy included and were not limited to

to provide a viable and more appropriate alternative to the imprisonment of nonviolent drug convicted criminals by offering a community-oriented treatment to individuals charged and convicted with an offense of being in a simple drug possession or simply using the drugs,
to save the state of California the large amounts of money that were being spent annually on imprisonment and re-imprisonment of nonviolent drug addicts through a less costly and more effective way of aiding the recovery of the addicts by taking them via a community-oriented treatment program and
to help fight drug abuse in California by reducing drug-related crimes and reducing the number of individuals in the state’s prisons thus enhancing public security as well as enhancing public well being via stemming drug abuse and addiction via workable and effective clients management strategies (prop 36, 2001-excerpts).

The objectives all of which the policy has exhibited good progress in theory achievement are bound to succeed in solving the overcrowding crises in the Californian state prisons and jails, as they have since its implementation left solely for serious and violent offenders. This has relieved the prison of the burden of holding unnecessary convicts who are termed by the proposition as non-violent (Drug policy alliance, March 2006).

California’s drug offenders who are generally termed as nonviolent can be sentenced to undergo a county community-based probation supervision rather than being incarcerated in the state prisons or to serve a jail term or being put under court-directed probation upon his or her release from the prison after completing the sentence. As a result, a nonviolent drug offender can only be taken to prison or state jail in a situation where he or she commits another drug offense while under probation or if in any way he or she happens to violate any directive that has been put forth by the court. In addition, a drug offender is upon being released from the prison put under three years of community-based state supervision (California’s penal code, prop 36. 2001).

According to the provisions of the latter, Offenders under this kind of supervision are referred to as parolees. Consequently, a parolee can only be taken back to prison if he or she is reconvicted of being in possession of or using illicit drugs. In such a case he or she will be taken sentenced back to prison or jail on account of the new offenses committed or through an administrative action of the board of prison terms depending on its finding on the parole violation.

According to The Los Ageless times (April 4, 2007), drug-related offenses are the most common forms of crimes in the United States of America. Consequently, the number of a prisoner in the state jails and prisons have been on a sharp increase especially in the latter years of the 20th century and the begging of the 21st century causing serious congestions in the latter (Los Ageless times, April 4, 2007, Curb Amicus 2005). Similarly, the war against drugs in many parts of the United States has been evident especially in the late 20th century which relied on enhanced severely punishing and incarceration of individuals arrested and convicted for handling and using illegal drugs.

Just like many parts of the United States California relied greatly on imprisonment and severe punishment as a fundamental effort to fight against drug-related crimes. As a result, hundreds of thousands of individuals; were put in captivity, charged, found guilty, and incarcerated with non-violent drug-related offenses (Drug policy alliance, March 2006).

According to Department of corrections and rehabilitation reports June (2000 to June 2005), the number of prisoners in the United States of America prisons soared beyond the handling capacity of most of these jails; especially in California disrupted families and thwarted the individuals’ hope of getting employment for a decent life. For instance, the number of nonviolent drug offenders who were jailed in the period between 1988 and 2000 in California alone, soared by a remarkable 400%, thus arousing a need for the Californian authority and lawmakers to devise an alternative and better method of dealing with nonviolent drug offenders.

On November 7th, 2000, a new California drug policy was enacted. The policy referred to as proposition 36 went through after it won with more than two million votes scooping 60% of the voters’ approval and presented a turnaround on the way of dealing with drug criminals especially first and second-time offenders (Drug policy alliance, March 2006). According to the proposals of the policy, drug offenses are now supposed to be handled fundamentally as a public health issue rather than being viewed and treated as criminal and advocated for treating the rather than arresting and jailing most of the peaceful convicts of drug-related offenses (Prop 36.2001, Drug policy alliance, March 2006).

In the history of California law reforms, the policy is one of the most significant legislation modifications since the rescinding of the alcohol prohibition. Within the first four years of its inception, the policy to a great extent was able to achieve its objectives and had exhibited itself as the most valuable public course of action that is potential of providing valuable solutions to the drug crises not only in California but also in the whole of United States.

Between mid-2001 to a mid-2005 proposition, 36 more than 140 thousand people were rescheduled from being imprisoned to a treatment program 70 000 of which were experiencing such treatment as a debut. As a result, there was a massive reduction of prisoners who were jailed as a result of being found in possession of drugs.

Within the initial four years of its implementation, the number of individuals jailed in California prisons fell greatly from 19736 to 13547 prisoners a decrease of 32% from 30th December 2000 to 30th June 2005 (Department of corrections and rehabilitation reports, June 2000 to June 2005, Drug policy alliance, March 2006). In the same way, the number of individuals sent to jail or prison due to drug-related offenses in the first year of the implementation of proposition 36 went down by 60% relative to the preceding year (Douglas Longshore et al., 2004).

Consequently, the policy achieved significant results in reducing the overcrowding of California prisons as exhibited by the diversion of many non-violent first and second-time drug convicts to treatment and probation programs. Also, its implementation made it unnecessary to contract many more men in prisons thus sparing the state’s tax pairs more than half a billion dollars and led to the disbandment of California’s women’s prison (Mark Martin, April 22, 2002).

According to the latter, the establishment and successful implementation of prop 36 was greatly attributed to the massive reduction in the number of people in many of California’s states prison. However, he admitted that other factors could have played a role in prisoners decline but maintained that the role played by this policy especially in the closure of the women prison in 2001 was undoubtedly significant

According to Prop 36 “Cost-benefit Analysis Justifies Investment in Treatment” (2006), the implementation of this policy has undoubtedly succeeded in saving the state of California considerable amounts of money to compound its benefits as far as decongesting the state’s prisons and jails. On average, close to 36000 individuals are put under the treatment of probation 36 treatment annually thus costing the states close to $1.08 billion in taxpayer money.

The annual cost of incarceration of an individual will cost the state close to $34,150. As a result, the adoption of probation 36 will reduce the state of California’s cost of handling drug convicts by close to 90%. In addition, treatment has the effect of permanently reducing the number of drug offenders since it is a permanent rehabilitation of the convicts through treatment and probation (Los Ageless times (April 4, 2007).

According to the Drug policy alliance, (March 2006), the treatment advocated for under proposition 36 is ideal and differs greatly from many other courts supervised treatment apparent in many parts of the United States of America in that it insist more on licensed treatment and uses empathy and care for drug users as the main strategy in rehabilitating individuals affected by drug cases and treating drug addiction as a fundamental health case rather than criminal. As a result, it maintains that imprisonment is not an option in dealing with nonviolent drug offenders hence the policy is primarily seen as a measure that will go a long way in decongesting the Californian prisons, an objective that the policy was able to achieve within the first five years since its inception on first July 2001 (Daniel, 2005)

The provisions of the proposition maintain that the war against drugs in California, as well as other parts of the United States, must therefore focus on achieving the objective of rehabilitating and recovering the lives of drug users and not taking punitive measures against them through imprisonment, the implementation of which has resulted in a massive reduction in the number of individuals incarcerated in the state of California prisons due to drug-related offenses (prop 36.2001, Daniel A, 2005, Drug policy alliance, March 2006),

Consequently, the overcrowding in the state’s prison that was witnessed before the enactment of the proposition has significantly been done away with by 2005. Due to a large number of drug convicts in California, more than 700 new drug treatment as well as expansion of existing programs has been done thus allowing for many more drug convicts to be redirected to the treatment programs who could have otherwise be jailed or imprisoned in the state’s prisons sinking the problem of the overcrowding in such prison to further disarray. However, the program has to a greater extent solved the overcrowding problem in California’s prisons and jails (Curb amicus, 2005, Drug policy alliance, March 2006)

The success of California’s prop 36 a (drug initiative or a system of dealing with nonviolent offenders) is evident in its ability to cut down the rate of violent crimes in the state of California and achieved excellent results in relieving the state’s prisons and jails of the pressure of congestion through a significant reduction in the number of new imprisonment cases. the outright provisions of prop 36 say that first and second-time non-violent drug offenders should be put under police surveillance or community-based treatment program as an alternative to being sentenced to serve a jail term in prison (Prop 36. 2001, Daniel, 2005, Douglas Longshore et al, 2004).

Having significantly reduced imprisonment, the new system has saved the country a lot of monetary overheads which the report estimated as $2 for every $1 invested in the program. In addition, the policy has included greater use of narcotics-treatment programs, assisting the graduated to obtain employment and enhanced sanctions such as mandatory and regular drug test requirements and short jail stay for individuals who decline to act in accordance with the provisions of prop 36 (Prop 36 “Cost-benefit Analysis Justifies Investment in Treatment”, 2006),.

The history and causes of overcrowding in states prisons (California)

Overcrowding in the state of California’s prison has been a problem even long before the presentation and inception of proposition 36 (Curb amicus, 2005) apart from proposition 36 of 2000, many other strategies had been devised and recommended to the authority of California to help solve the raging overcrowding crises. However, the authorities had been continuously and adamantly ignoring the implementation of these proposals, such as the parole reforms that were developed by the department of correction and rehabilitation (Curb amicus, 2005, Department of corrections and rehabilitation reports June 2000 to June 2005)

After ignoring most of the recommendations from expatriates, they continued to apply the primitive’ “ a tough on crime” sentencing policies that insisted on long jail terms for drug criminals and the infamous “three strike and you are out” laws which proposed that a convict with prior criminal record sentence be elongated (Curb amicus, 2005). According to the latter, these policies led to massive and unnecessary increments of the number of people in states prisons resulting in severe overcrowding in the latter and subsequent infringement of rights of individuals who finds themselves in the prisons; a fact that was also supported by California’s department of correction and rehabilitation.

Proposition 36, in its endeavor to achieve a reduction in the number of prisoners in the states of California and provide an effective and permanent solution to the states prison overcrowding crises, differs greatly from the proposition of AB 900 (governments’ plan for an immense and expensive program to construct 53,000more prisons) as a solution to overcrowding (Curb Amicus, 2005). According to the proponents of propositions of 36 argued that AB900 will not solve the overcrowding problems but it will rather intensify it. In addition, it saw it as a way of delaying more appropriate means to ease the overcrowding and diverting valuable resources which could be used in treating and rehabilitation and offering support for those immediately released from the prison.

Irrespective of the government maintaining that the implementation of AB900 is a measure to relieve congestion in the state’s prisons, many saw it as a failure in that, the increments of the number of prisons will see many more people sent and stacked therein in deplorable conditions since it only allocates resources for building new prisons without incorporating a budget for staffing the 53000 newly constructed prisons and equipping them with beds. Consequently, this will see prisoners being stacked in overcrowded prisons with inadequate space and resources thus making them live in dangerous and inhumane conditions while under imprisonment (Curb Amicus, 2005).

From the latter years of the 20th century to and until today, proposition 36 that sought treatment rather than incarceration of first and second time nonviolent drug offenders has achieved tremendous and unmatched success in the achievement of this objective (Drug policy alliance, March 2006).

Other proposals that were made with similar objectives before pro.36 included the parole reforms proposal, proposal to release the elderly prisoners, offering community support for individuals who have just been released from prison to help them to move on with life thus preventing the likelihood of such individuals from re-indulging themselves in similar crimes and drugs (Drug policy alliance, March 2006), hence preventing the possibility of an individual; from going back to prisons after such release.

Also, there have been proposals to change from the infamous sentencing policies such as tough on crime and three-strike laws that have contributed greatly to the overcrowding of the state’s prisons in the past (The Los Ageless times, April 4, 2007).

Having incorporated all of these proposals in one way or another, the implementation of proposition 36 that calls for treatment and rehabilitation with massive support and care for first and second-time offenders or those convicted with nonviolent drug-related offenses rather than severe imprisonment has gone a long way to ease the overcrowding crises in the state of California prison since 2001 to date (The Los Ageless times, April 4, 2007, Drug policy alliance, March 2006).

Irrespective of the facts that no concrete data had been made available concerning the empirical effects of the implementation of proposition 36 in the reduction of prisoners in California’s prisons, initial results (Daniel A 2005, Department of corrections and rehabilitation reports, June 2000 to June 2005, Drug policy alliance, March 2006), indicated that the offering of treatment to the nonviolent drug criminals was a highly efficient and less costly way of confronting and reducing drug dealing and reduction of overcrowding the already overstrained California’s judicial systems. The success of proposition 36 is greatly embedded in its ability to reduce the number of individuals imprisoned in California states prison as a result of being convicted with drug-related offenses (Daniel A, 2005).

For instance, records reveal that as of the end of June in the year 2000, states jails in California held a record high of 20116 prisoners most of which had been convicted of being in illegal possession of drugs. Before 1st of July 2001, the official effective date to the proposition 36 many suspects who qualified to evade incarceration under proposition 36 had their judgment put forward to take advantage of the new law which led to a massive fall in the prison population at the time since there was no substitution of the released prisoners by the new ones (Department of corrections and rehabilitation reports, June 2000 to June 2005, Drug policy alliance, March 2006).

Once Proposition 36 came into effect there was a significant reduction in the number of people in incarceration by a remarkable 32% in the first four years of the new policy implementation (Daniel, 2005, Drug policy alliance, March 2006, Department of corrections and rehabilitation reports, June 2000 to June 2005). This is supported by the fact that as a result of the implementation of Proposition 36, the California prisons and jails were mainly available for holding individuals convicted of violent crimes and other voracious offenses thus offering an effective and a sure solution to the prison overcrowding problem.

According to Douglas Longshore et al (2004), while comparing the effects of both the proposition 36 treatment program and infamous California’s drug court-supervised treatment system (that existed prior to proposition 36) on the public health, drug abuse reduction and imprisonment rates, the assessment revealed that the court-supervised system had a relatively little impact in reducing California’s prisons overcrowding. In the same way, the assessment depicts the achievement of proposition 36 in providing a permanent solution to the overcrowding in California’s prisons as excellent following the program’s success in diverting hundreds of thousands of potential prisoners of nonviolent drug-related offenses to treatment or rehabilitation programs.

Comparative statistics show that the largest drug court-supervised treatment system attended to only between 3000 and 4000 drug cases annually less than 1% of what proposition 36 was able to serve in a year (Douglas Longshore et al, 2004).

According to a report released by the Los Angeles Times in April 2009, the success of California’s proposition 36 was faulted, indicating that only 25 percent of offenders that are put under the program’s treatment hardly complete the treatment. In a research that was carried out on about 1000 convicts who had been referred to proposition 36 treatment program, it was found that close to 50% failed to complete the court-ordered treatment thus leading to its critics saying that the drug offenders have ended up an advantage of the loopholes of the program to avoid the responsibility of their offenses. As a result of massive evasion, the police are thus forced to re-arrest the offenders and end up being sent to prison after the expiry of the third chance to comply as per the requirements of the proposition.

However, the research by UCLA concluded that close to 75 percent of individuals who successfully went through the treatment were able to completely abstain from drugs in the subsequent one year following the completion of such treatment program while close to 59% of the programs graduate had gotten a job a year after completing the rehabilitation program (Douglas Longshore et al, 2004).

According to David Pating, the president of the Californian society of addiction medicine, the majority of individuals who were undergoing drug rehabilitation and recovery were likely to go back to using drugs wondering whether Californians did not wary of congested prisons that individuals who are rescued out of it by the prop 36 would dare go back to drugs after treatment [The Los Ageless times, April 4, 2007]. Nevertheless, the proponent of the program had from the beginning, recognized that relapsing especially for addiction cases was normal (Drug policy alliance, March 2006). The three opportunities are given to the client therefore is seen as an efficient measure to handle the cases of relapse.

The commitment of the proposition to completely rid nonviolent offenders from incarceration is so bold that when the governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to give the judges more power to indict short imprisonment terms on proposition 36 convicts who failed to complete the treatment or continued using drugs after such commitment, it was blocked via a court process [Los Ageless times, April 4, 2007].

The proponents of Proposition 36 argue that the solution to stemming drug abuse in California will not be achieved by enhancing the punitive measures via imprisonment but rather in enhancing treatment and rehabilitation efforts especially for the non-violent offenders (Drug policy alliance, March 2006). After all the entire objective is to achieve a reduction in the number of individuals imprisoned as nonviolent drug-related offenders by diverting them to community-based programs and consequently sparing the prison space for violent criminals.

Data, Methodology and Discussion of the Finding

The study hypothesis

The hypothesis of this research is ideally developed from the thesis’s main question, which is whether the enactment and implementation of California’s proposition 36 have aided in the reduction of overcrowding of the states through reduction of the number of drug imprisonments?

For the purpose of this research, a null hypothesis is adopted that is the proposition 36 does not affect whatsoever the overcrowding issue in California’s prisons.

The study takes a form of a survey. Consequently, it relies on both qualitative and quantitative purely secondary data extracted from the various literature sources to test the hypothesis and draw conclusions as to whether the implementation of proposition 36 has affected the overcrowded in California.

Consequently, the finding of the paper will be deduced from the researched information. Already the literature review indicates that proposition 36 has to a greater extent leading to a great reduction in the number of individuals sent to prison over drug-oriented offenses. Consequently, the overcrowding in Californian prisons has been substantially relieved. As a result, the hypothesis is already testing negative in the case.

For instance, according to research carried out by the University of California in Los Angeles in 2006 and the data released by California’s department of correction and rehabilitation as well in a report published and released by the drug policy alliance in march 2006, it indicated that the number of a prisoner held in California’s prisoner went down by a remarkable 32% within the first four years since the inception of proposition 36 on July 1, 2001.

Furthermore, a report by the Los Angeles Times in March 2008 indicates that the reduction of the number of individuals imprisoned in Californian prisons started falling significantly even prior to the inception of prop.36 as convicts who felt that they were entitled to treatment under the prop. 36 sought that their sentencing is postponed to allow them to take advantage of it. As a result, a literature review was adequate and provided the researcher with a substantial basis to make conclusions that the implementation of prop 36 has led to significant relief of overcrowding in California.

Summary, Conclusion and Implication

Drug-related crimes are the most common forms of crime in the United States of America and California in particular. Similarly, the literature reveals that most of the individuals who are convicted and incarcerated in the state’s prison are petty and nonviolent drug offenders. Primarily, the authorities have been trying to fight the crime by enhancing punitive measures taken against the offenders, which took the form of convicted individuals being sentenced to serve a jail term or being retained in prison. California being a state of United States that is typically notorious for drugs has been the greatest affected registering the highest number of prisoners majority having been convicted with nonviolent drugs crimes and causing ‘unnecessary overcrowding’ in the state prisons and jails.

The overcrowding in California’s prisons situations that threatened to degenerate into a humanitarian crisis as prisoners tend to be subjected to dangerous and unhealthy conditions as the congestions in the prison soar beyond the latter capacity. To solve this crisis, a strategy referred to as California’s proposition 36 was devised in 2000, which aimed at offering an alternative to imprisonment of nonviolent drug offenders by taking them through a community-based treatment and rehabilitation program instead of retaining them to jail. Since its inception in 2001, all records show that it has assisted the state of California not only to rid the state of hundreds of thousands of prisoners but also has aided in massive stemming of drug abuse among the citizens of the states and aided in a restructuring of many addicts lives.

The research found that prop 36 has so far resulted in a substantial reduction in the number of individuals held in California states prisons. As such the paper concluded that proposition is a better approach to dealing with nonviolent drug offenders than imprisonment as the latter causes unnecessary overcrowding in such prisons and jails. More so it has excelled in reducing overcrowding in states prisons as well as enhancing public health by enhancing reduction in drug abuse. In addition, it is a rather cheaper way of dealing with drug offenders, relative to very costly imprisonment.

Areas for Further Research

The empirical data representing the reduction of prisoners in various California’s prisons from 2000 to 2009 as a result of proposition 38
The financial effect of proposition 36 in California
The effects of proposition 36 in the reduction of drug abuse in California 2000 to 2009

References

Curb, Amicus, 2005, A Summary Of CURB Amicus Brief In Prison Overcrowding Case In California. Web.

[In this article, the author particularly reviews the issue of overcrowding in the prisons: Californians state prisons and jails in particular. In the article the author faults the rigidity of the states authority in effecting reforms on the current drug policies with specific regard to the sentencing and incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders. In line with the same the writer attributes the overcrowding to the use of infamous sentencing policies such as the toughness on crime law and the primitive’ “three strikes and you are out” law that aims at lengthening the jail sentences of those who commits drug offenses for a second time.

In the article the author dismisses the AB 900 ( a government plan to build 53 000 more prisons) as a strategy to decongest the states prisons; terming it as costly and ineffective with a great potential to endanger the lives of the inmates further through making them live in deplore and live threatening conditions while in prison. The author hails the potential effectiveness of prop 36 to solve the overcrowding crises thus proposes its full implementation as well as proposes the release of elderly prisoners as a measure to decongest the prisoner]

Daniel A, 2005 A Successful Law with Uncertain Future: “A Review of Proposition 36 Fifth Year on the Book”: California Criminal Defense reporter. Web.

[This reporter in his article review the pros and cons in the implementation of the California’s proposition 36. according to this writer, the act has produced favorable results in the first four years of implementation in terms of reducing the overcrowding in the California’s criminal justice systems via substantial; reduction of inmates, aided in the reduction of drug abuse and improving public health as well as helped drug addicts to recover from drug use, changed their lives and at times helped the latter to find good job for better living. However, the author terms the future of the statute as uncertain …….]

Department Of Corrections And Rehabilitation Reports, 2000 – 2005: Data Analyses Unit Prisons Census Sacramental, CA.

[………..these reports provided numerical data facts and statistical analyses about the changes in prisons population from June the year 2000 six month before the establishment of the California’s proposition 36 to June 2005. Although there are other factors that could have affected the changes in prison population the authors of these reports greatly attribute the reduction in the population to the successful implementation and effectiveness of prop 36]

Drug Policy Alliance, March 2006 Proposition 36, “Improving Lives, and Delivering Results”: A Review of the First Four Years of California’s Substance Act and Crime Prevention Act. Web.

[This is a comprehensive report that represents a review of the successes and achievement of the California proposition 36 since its inception on 1^st July 2001 to 30^th June 2005. among the successes that are implicated in the report is the substantial reduction in the number of prisoners as a result of nonviolent drug offenders being taken to a community based treatment and probation program instead of being sentenced to prison or state jails. As a result the prisons and jails in California have become a reservation for violent criminals, who are much fewer relative to nonviolent drugs offenders].

Hardy, et al 2005 “Initial Implementation of California’s Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act: Findings from Focus Groups in Ten Counties.” Evaluation & Program Planning, 28(2), 221-232.

Joseph, et al 2001 “Drug Court Effectiveness: a Review of California Evaluation Report, 1995-1999” Inc. The Journal Of Psychoactive Drugs Vol. 33(4) …

[ in this article the author provides a detailed comparative analyses of the drug court supervision and the California’s prop 36. in the article, the author review the effectiveness of the two strategies in providing solutions to drug abuse and reduction of drug related offences in California. In the analyses the prop 36 is depicted as more effective especially in its ability to stem drug offenses and reducing the number of prisoners since it keeps the latter out of the bars …]

Longshore, Douglas et al 2006, Evaluation of the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act, Los Angeles: UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Program. Web.

Martin, Mark 2002 The Changing Population behind Bars: Major Drop in Women in States Prisons” San Francisco chronicles.

[In this article, Mark Martin reviews the variations in the number of prisoners in various California’s prisons since 2000 with a special insight to the remarkable reduction of woman prisoners and the subsequent closure of the California state’s women prison. Although the author admits that there could have been other factors leading to the decline in imprisonment cases in this period he attributed much of this reduction especially for women to the successful implementation of the prop 36]

Prop 36. 2001, The Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act 2001: A Smarter Drug Policy for California. Web.

[…………This article provides the law statutes that comprise the California substance abuse and crime act that was affected on the 1^st of July 2001 having won majority vote in a referendum on November 7^th 2000. The article provides full details of the law, defines various principles and subjects that the law covers and gives the guidelines on implementation of prop 36 and clearly defines the individual offenders’ eligibility to the proposition. The article provide the various sections of the statute]

Proposition 36, 2006 “Cost-benefit Analysis Justifies Investment in Treatment”, inc. Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly, 18(16), 1-7.

The Los Ageless Times, 2007 “Report Details Successes, Flaws in California’s Prop 36. Web.

[In this article, a Los Angeles column writer Alex provides a summary of successes and failures of the California substance abuse and crimes prevention act 2001. Among the successes that the author highlights includes the policy’s effect in reducing the number of prisoners thus reducing the overcrowding in the California’s criminal justice system, saving the states billions of money that could have been utilized in handing the many prisoners especially nonviolent drug criminals and success in stemming drug abuse and relapse for addicted parolees].

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