Waning power of state prison guards’ union

California’s prison population is going down, and that’s a good thing, right?

Our state’s lockups had been so dangerously — criminally — overcrowded that they became the subject of federal oversight. When they reached their peak numbers, in 2006, after years of mandatory sentences and juveniles tried and sentenced as adults during the Three Strikes era prompted by a successful ballot initiative in 1994, there were 165,000 prisoners in California in a system designed for 85,000.

“Prisoners were sleeping in gyms, hallways and dayrooms. Mentally ill prisoners were jammed into tiny holding cells. There were dozens of riots and hundreds of attacks on guards every year. Suicide rates were 80% higher than in the rest of the nation’s prisons,” a ProPublica investigation found in 2019.

But here in 2024, there are 70,000 fewer inmates than there were in 2011. The pressures have eased. Opportunities for actual rehabilitation instead of mere incarceration have increased, as we noted recently when discussing successful attempts by the California Community College system to educate more prisoners, increasing the potential for successful outcomes and employment when they are released, and, crucially, lessening further criminal activity and recidivism.

Who’s recidivism good for? Well, sadly, cynically, one group only: the prison guards union, and more jobs for its members.

In recent decades, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which represents 26,000 prison guards, has become the most politically influential public employee union in the state, and the biggest recipient of its largesse has been Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose campaigns have raked in $2.9 million from the CCPOA since he was elected governor.

The group’s spending was particularly important to Newsom as he successfully fought off a recall effort, during which the union was his largest donor.

Soon to be termed out of office, the governor is to his credit beginning to face the simple fact that there are fewer needs for (very expensive — $132,000 per inmate per year) prisons in California, going forward. He originally, and gingerly, suggested six years ago that he would try to close at least one prison in the state, and in fact he has closed three, as well as canceling the contract for a proposed private prison, in the face of the need for massive statewide budget cuts as Sacramento’s tax revenues have declined.

That is just one of the positives that comes from the need for belt-tightening in a state Capitol with a collective jones for overspending its citizen’s money.

So what’s that going to mean for the future of the CCPOA and its influence on politics in California, a recent CalMatters story by Nigel Duara and Jeremia Kimelman asks.

An adviser to the group told the reporters that the union and the governor have had “respectful and substantive” discussions about possibly closing more prisons during the budget cutbacks.

“Union leaders clearly aired their views and listened very carefully to the administration’s priorities,” Nathan Ballard said. “The governor made it known that he valued the union’s input.”

We’re sure he did. Because no donors have been of more value to him, personally, as he built his political base and now looks forward to his future, possibly on the national stage.

And we’re sure as well that the certain-to-be-waning influence of the union will be a good thing for California. Shamefully, the CCPOA spent more than $1 million in the successful 2020 effort to defeat former state Sen. John Moorlach in Orange County after the Republican legislator had also questioned the overly generous pension benefits afforded state employees.

Now it’s time for Democratic lawmakers, who hold all the power in the Legislature, to stand up to the CCPOA, too.