The Governor believes the three-judge panel was established prematurely without giving the state a chance to make its huge prison expansion plan work.

Apparently, the Governor believes he can convince the appeals court that pouring more money into the problem by constructing more prisons will fix the problem, and that he should be given the opportunity to fix the problem without federal court interference.

While prisoners continue to die or become permanently maimed because of conditions directly related to overcrowding, the Governor plans to have the Attorney General's Office do what it does best - use stall tactics in the form of endless appeals rather than fix the underlying problems. The State of California has a long history of using this tactic, thus nothing has changed.

In fact, nothing has changed for the last twenty years in spite of throwing more money into the prison system in several attempts to "fix" overcrowding. The state has probably spent more money in the last twenty years in attempting to fix the overcrowded prison system than it has on improving its higher education system. Yet, after several prison expansion programs during this time, the prison system is far worse off today than it was when previous governors first began pouring money into prison expansion.

Many experts have examined root causes of the State's problems, and even suggested solutions. None of which advocated prison expansion as a solution. Instead studies have pointed to causation based in social system failure in California, e.g., a punitive mind set that does not include rehabilitation, or a poor education system that does not reach the disadvantaged at an early age, if ever, and thus predisposes a disproportionately large percentage of disadvantaged people to commit crimes. Other serious problems include drug addiction, homelessness, gang behavior, and health care in the private sector. The list is too long to continue here, but it is clear that the underlying social issues will not be addressed as long as we spend the majority of the state's available revenue on prisons.

Following the movie Field of Dreams, prisoners began repeating the well known line from that movie, but in a context applying it to the prison system, "You build it, they will come." Thus, no matter how many beds are added to the overcrowded prison system in California, added beds are never used to ease overcrowding - added beds are always used as places to house additional prisoners. The politicians who got elected on a "get tough or. crime" platform feel obligated to send more people to prison - but not to fix the social problems which would sent less people to prison. To fulfill their campaign promises, the legislators pass tougher and tougher laws with longer sentences. Now, the Governor claims his $7.9 billion prison expansion package will fix the problem he faces in federal court. That is mere ephemeral sophistry. The reality is: You build it, they will come!

Building more prisons fixes nothing. The prison system is now so huge that sufficient staff to operate in a constitutional manner is a much larger problem than expanding the number of beds. One needs only to look at the records developed in the various lawsuits. It's all public record. It is simply a shortage of adequate professional staff that is causing the lack of medical care. The State could build new buildings until the present generation is old and gray, but what good are they if there is no staff to run them.

Although it gets far less press coverage than the prison debacle, the California Department of Mental Health ("DMH") has lost a great number of professional staff to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation ("CDCR"). The two state agencies have a continuing bidding war over staff. One that the CDCR is winning because it has more money. A check of the web sites for both agencies will find a great deal space devoted advertising for staff. Both agencies are desperate to hire more staff, and neither is having adequate success.

In 2005, when the DMH was unable to staff its new facility at Coalinga, the California Legislature enacted legislation relieving the DMH of licensing requirements by authorizing, "the voluntary suspension on health facility beds at Coalinga State Hospital for a period of up to 6 years, . . ." This effectively allowed the present Coalinga State Hospital ("CSH") policy of staffing the hospital units not by professionals, but rather by Department of Police Services ("DPS") police officers.

With approximately 750 empty beds available in unopened units, Department of Mental Health ("DMH") officials have authorized the overcrowding of presently operating units. In yet another move to make Coalinga State Hospital ("CSH") more like a prison, and less like a hospital, additional beds are being added to already crowded units through converting Treatment Rooms into housing areas. However, they can only do this because the units are "unlicensed." On Tuesday, July 24, 2007, the former treatment rooms began housing patients.

What was the DMH justification for overcrowding presently operating Units when there are approximately 750 empty beds in unopened Units? The DMH used its inability to hire staff as its justification for this overcrowding.

There you have it -the latest example of why the Governor's plan to spend $7.9 billion building more prisons, and thus prison buildings, can not fix the problem. The build more facilities scheme failed at Coalinga, and in doing so, illustrated that expansion cannot solve this sort of problem. Neither agency can solve their problems by simply building more buildings. The real problem illustrated at Coalinga is that neither agency has been able to hire sufficient professional staff to run their departments in a constitutionally adequate manner.

To complicate matters, the DMH has some sort of arraignment with the CDCR to provide certain medical services to DMH patients. Of course, none of this has been reported in the main stream media. Public records requests have failed to find contracts between the two agencies. In fact, letters denying any such contracts between the two agencies have been received. The arraignment apparently is some sort of "secret stuff," but it certainly exists in operational practice.

What medical services does the CDCR provide to the DMH? For one, transportation and security for all DMH patients from hospitals on or near prison grounds to all outside medical appointments, including those for surgical procedures. Earlier this year, Doctor Robert Sillen, the Special Master appointed by Judge Theldon Henderson to improve health care for state prisoners, threatened to hire his own guards to transport CDC prisoners to medical appointments. He did this following prison officials making a claim that they had insufficient staff to transport state prison inmates to medical appointments. We are waiting to hear an explanation as to how the CDCR can transport DMH patients to medical appointments, but at the same time has insufficient staff to transport its own inmates to medical appointments and procedures.

The CDCR, through its Prison Industry Authority, supplies eye glasses and dental prosthesis to DMH patients. Of course, the service is the same dismal service received by CDCR's own inmates. The DMlJ patients often wait for 12 to 18 months to receive a pair of eye glasses. And then, when finally received, the items are often defective. The glasses almost always do not fit, and frequently are the wrong prescription. The same with dental prosthesis.

This misuse of CDCR staff and medical resources causes both agency's wards to suffer unconstitutional conditions in regard to medical services. When is the Special Master going to tell the CDCR to take care of its own prisoners in a timely- and competent manner and stop marketing to outside agencies until it gets its own house in order?

The bottom line is: the Governor's claim that the State should be given an opportunity to fix its prison problems is nothing but smoke and mirrors as long as the state continues to address the wrong problems, while remaining unwilling to address the right problems. It appears that those in a position to correct these problems continue to suffer from advanced historical myopia when it comes to this latest attempt to try the same old thing again - another prison expansion.