Yesterday, in writing about California’s prison crisis, I noted one way for the state to reduce the population in their unconstitutionally overloaded jails: they could allow medical parole for terminally ill, infirm, coma-stricken or paraplegic inmates. This would save the state millions even if they paid through Medicaid for continued care, and it would get someone who offers no threat to society out of prison. The legislature passed, and Governor Schwarzenegger signed, a medical parole bill last September. But the Department of Corrections dragged their feet and never held a medical parole hearing for any inmate until this week. And yesterday, get this: they denied the inmate medical parole:

California parole officials rejected a plea on Tuesday from a quadriplegic convict who had hoped to become the first state prison inmate released under a new law aimed at cutting the number of inmates and the cost of care in the nation’s largest state prison system.

Corcoran State Prison inmate Steven Martinez, a 42-year-old convicted kidnapper and rapist, qualified under the law that took effect this year because he was left paralyzed when his spine was severed in a knife fight with other inmates 10 years ago. He’s served 12 years of a 157 years-to-life sentence [...]

Martinez’s medical care has cost taxpayers about $625,000 a year, according to court documents. His attorney, Ken Karan of Carlsbad, said the state also paid his client $750,000 in damages after Martinez suffered a severe pressure sore requiring six months of treatment at an outside hospital.

This is completely insane. Here you have a quadraplegic – maybe a bad dude in his heart, but incapable of acting on it in any way – that we’re spending $625,000 to hold in prison for no reason. Under normal circumstances this would be a waste of money – under the circumstances that California, under a Supreme Court ruling, must reduce the prison population, it’s unconscionable. This guy is taking up the space of some other criminal. There are people in comas in state prisons. When lawmakers passed this bill, they didn’t just want parole hearings, they wanted people who could not threaten society released, as a least-worst option to relieve a prison crisis.

This shows how completely incapable the state’s leadership is at fixing this problem. Take a look at this New York Times piece about Chino Prison, site of a major riot recently, and you see th appalling conditions where we warehouse people in California:

The basketball hoops jimmied up to the ceiling prove that this dingy space was a gym once upon a time. But for years now, the windowless space has served as a de facto cell for dozens of prisoners at the California Institution for Men.

The rows of bunk beds, just a few inches apart, covered almost every empty space on the floor Tuesday afternoon. The gap between most beds allowed only the thinnest of inmates to stand comfortably. A few prisoners wandered around, but most simply rested on their thin mattresses, reading or dozing. As a rule, they go out to the yard just two or three times a week.

Ominous messages stenciled on the walls signaled the tension: “Caution: No warning shots will be fired.” Two guards mind the 200 prisoners, while another, known as a gunner, watches from up high, ready to intervene at any moment [...]

“It’s an unacceptable working environment for everyone,” said Jeanne Woodford, a former director of the state prisons and a former warden at San Quentin prison. “Every little space is filled with inmates and they are housed where they shouldn’t be housed, and every bed is full. It leads to greater violence, more staff overtime and a total inability to deal with health care and mental illness issues.”

Emphasis mine. The people working at these prisons know this is an unsustainable mess. It also happens to be unconstitutional. Yet there’s such a bias toward “tough on crime” from policymakers that even the tiniest relief for the system cannot get enacted.

Steve Lopez, one of the few remaining influential columnists in the state, is right on here. The status quo cannot continue. This is an opportunity for sentencing reform, for returning corrections to the core principle of rehabilitation and treatment, for some sanity in the process.