I can't say I pay close attention to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he's doing some things that make him the kind of Republican I could support. This week, it's prisons. California has the nation's largest state prison system, in such sorry shape it's on the verge of a federal takeover. So who has he named to head the system? Jeanne Woodford, a reform-minded warden who believes in prevention, education and rehabilitation. From Tuesday's Morning Edition:
GONZALES: Jeanne Woodford knows what it's like to work her way up from the bottom. She joined the California prison system fresh out of college and came to work at San Quentin as a prison guard. Back then, in 1978, California, like the rest of the nation, was getting tough on crime. But Woodford remembers how the practice of locking up prisoners for fixed terms backfired.Ms. JEANNE WOODFORD (Department of Corrections, California): And so we started to see more and more younger people coming into the prison who did not have the incentives to behave themself, and they were coming in with longer terms, they were coming in street gang members, so the violence quickly increased.GONZALES: And with the violence came long periods of lockdowns, which choked off vocational training classes. Over time, college classes, provided at taxpayer expense, were eventually outlawed, and Woodford, working her way up the chain of command, was learning a lesson.Ms. WOODFORD: My history at that particular prison led to my belief that if you're impacting that offender, the potential for impacting that offender's children and their family can stop the cycle of crime and stop victimization. And that really is true public safety.
The broken windows theory applied to prison reform. With no tax funding she turned to community and non-profit volunteers to build education and training programs. That impressed the governor. Schwarzenegger's overall reform plan, which creates a new Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to underscore the shift towards rehabilitation and prevention, has been met with substantial criticism. Time will tell. I'm just impressed to see that rehabilitation and prevention are part of one Republican's agenda.
Here is the concluding Part 2 of the Morning Edition series.
