-American Public Media, Marketplace, June 6, 2011 by Jeff Tyler
http://bit.ly/kWGdZj
Barry Krisberg with UC Berkeley’s Law School says housing an inmate in prison costs about $50,000 a year. “Putting that same person on probation—even intensive probation—would be $12,000. So you’re saving an extraordinary amount of money by managing the non-dangerous people in probation.”
-San Jose Mercury News, June 8, 2011
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_18233972
California’s juvenile prison system offers evidence that locking up more people does not directly reduce crime, according to research by Barry Krisberg at the UC Berkeley School of Law. In 1996, California had 10,000 juveniles behind bars, Krisberg says. By 2010, the number had shrunk to 1,000. But instead of the spike in crime that many expected, the number of incidents has dropped.
-San Francisco Chronicle, June 13, 2011 by Marisa Lagos
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/13/MN1P1JSCBV.DTL&tsp=1
Barry Krisberg … said the California District Attorneys Association has enormous sway over lawmakers and opposes most sentencing changes…. “The question is, what’s wrong with us? Are we more conservative than Virginia? Are we more irrational than North Carolina?” he said. “It’s the politics, and it’s the dilemma of this state…. It’s not the prison guards—they are not standing in the way. It’s not victims’ rights groups. It’s really the District Attorneys Association.”