WRITE OR DIE
WRITE OR DIE

California on Blast

In the state of California circa 1980s, former Gov. Deukmejian's administration closed several mental health care facilities and reduced funding for the remaining ones, while Don Novey, the new president of the California Correctional Officers Association (CCOA), saw his group's budget increase from $923 million to $5.7 billion well into 2004, as Don Novey, the son of a prison guard and a guard himself, led a successful effort to combine Youth Authority supervisors, parole officers with prison guards, to become not just a political power house, but in fact gauging the rising annual prison guard salary (from $14,440 in 1980 to $54,000 by 2002) and the growth in the number of state prisons (from 13 in 1985 to 31 by 1995).

When you follow the money and highlight the time frame, you can compare it to match precisely during the explosion of crack and weapons "mysteriously appearing" in the possession of California inner city youth and the new legal language that ushered in a plethora of new designer "Anti-Street Gang Laws."

How could former Gov. Deukmejian, Don Novey, and President Ronald Reagan, ironically another California governor, not know that by flooding the inner cities with crack and weapons would create mischief and bloodshed, and what we now call mass incarceration of an entire generation, and yes, including those citizens who are incarcerated with mental health needs?

This issue of the Write or Die Zine Project #6 is our gift of awareness on behalf of those men, women, and children born into poverty, poor education conditions, and limited employability skills training, incarcerated, mistreated and unheard by society who are the generation of victims directly affected by the betrayal and acts of treachery by the Ronald Reagan administration, Gov. George Deukmejian, and Don Novey (CCOA).

Reference: California Correctional Peace Officers Associate website.
Introduction - History - Political Challenges - Prison Reform July 2005
Library: Institute of Governmental Studies
University of California
109 Moses Hall #2370
Berkely, CA 94720-2370
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