Once the standard-bearer

...It was not always so. Once, California had the nation's premier system, studied by other states and nations. It had an admired research staff and worked to educate and rehabilitate its inmates.

But like much of the rest of the nation over the past three decades, it enacted get-tough laws with long sentencing provisions that put people behind bars for longer periods of time. Unlike many other states, however, which in recent years have looked for ways to ease prison population and lower recidivism, California has achieved little reform.
"When it comes to prison systems, California is the 800-pound gorilla," said Alexander Busansky, a former prosecutor who is executive director of the U.S. Commission on Safety and Abuse, a think tank that works to improve prison conditions. "The problem in California is that hope is lost."

Critics of the system say it is merely reflective of the deterioration of a variety of government services, including the Golden State's educational system and its highways, that were once the envy of the nation. But what has been at work in California's prisons also reflects the effect of the nation's experimentation with tough sentencing, combined with the internal machinations of state politics.

In the 1950s, '60s and '70s, California embraced a philosophy that the state could successfully treat individual offenders through education and psychotherapy. Wardens wrote books, including the groundbreaking 1952 study "Prisoners are People," and held advanced degrees in social work. The department's research wing had 80 experts on staff...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13250911/

Reading this article is almost depressing. Not because of the subject matter, but because it illustrates how deeply deluded white liberals really are. They really can't understand why crime, and the prison population, has skyrocketed in California. They are so ideologically blinded that they can't make the obvious corellation between the huge influx of non-whites (especially spicazoids) into California and the epidemic of crime. I really feel like I'm living in the Land of the Crazy People sometimes.

-Brian