Transforming California's State Prisons Into Low-Cost Green Construction Projects

When the U.S. Supreme Court ordered California to reduce its over crowed prisons from 140,000 to 80,000 the state was presented with another challenge to government planning logic that has increasingly tended to fail to comprehend the complex social complex of compresence of environmental and economic use. California prisons are money pits, yet if a surplus of criminals are not to be reallocated to society to structure organized crime networks the state of California should develop a new theory of prison construction and function.

It may be possible for California to catch and release criminals in the future with better electronic monitoring, or better armed citizens with more liberal gun laws may better be able to defend themselves against criminal assault. If the U.S. Government ever creates an efficient border control zone with Mexico stopping all illegal aliens from entering California it may be reasonable to just ship convicted criminals from Mexico back home if they have minor sentences. Certainly California politics has created an inefficient penal system that is expensive and fails to serve the people effectively. The state goals should include low-cost prevention of crime, swift arrest and correction of criminals, and a prison methodology that functions with ecological efficiency on a sustainable basis.
Plainly a fully employed, well adjusted and happy society with few criminals is better than an indebted, economically and ecologically dysfunctioning society blundering along on a non-sustainable basis.

Because the topic is rich with points to consider I shall write about just a few salient features of how to structure purposeful new prisons at much lower social cost. As it is, the very construction technology of prisons and theory of the use of prisons creates an inverse efficiency contracting phenomena providing least service at highest cost. So rewriting the script for processing convicts through a few years of rehabilitation is in order. Yet society is itself in need of ecological economic rehabilitation.

With 60,000 surplus prisoners the state may need to build 60 new prisons. Convict labor to build these prisons is available, and the prisons when complete would be sold to the private sector as completed artificial mountain shaped low-entropy condominium or business spaces. The convicts would be guaranteed a five year occupancy (if they have a five year sentence left) in the new prison before it was sold, in order that they are not just being exploited. They must have something to work for as they move from the tents to the individual room with a view of the desert.

New California convicts should be treated as new work hires set to construct prisons shaped like small, artificial mountain ranges with ecological economic methods and values. Ecological value ought to be added to the desert lot on which they labor. New habitat for wildlife on the exteriors should arise as the prisons goes up. Empty moats and berms would be constructed to contain convicts from escaping, yet like the naval academy graduates, the prisoners would be trained to be on a contractual schedule of advance, and they might be motivated to complete the course of incarceration.

Low-entropy renewable ecological economics could be a slid basis for prisoner rehabilitation. It would at least be better than training them to lift weights before going to auto shop. Training a prison culture to be chop shopping car thieves an enforcers in a stupid auto-culture isn't very bright ultimately and presents significant social costs reinforcing wrong ecological and economic values.

California prisons might also use a principle of gunnite concrete monolithic dome construction of super-insulated, low cost individual domes to isolate inmates yet provide them with continuing computer delivered education in fundamental as well as solar panel maintenance. Prisoners should never be permitted to congregate or share meals except after church, yet they should have daily opportunities for long distance jogging on a track individually.

Some prisons might be built with new low cost fabrication techniques that provide an immediate infrastructure for mass solar power private sector power production. Prisoners might be trained to be solar panel facility operators. The might be trained to move solar collecting devices toward the sun, keep them clean, wire them correctly and perhaps install wiring circuits to deliver power to the grid.

The traditional vocational training efforts and physical structure of California prisons should abolished in the new prison projects. Recidivism rates are high as it is, so transforming into a new project at lower cost with far higher potential direct public return is a reasonable change to make.

Prison food should not be cooked. Fresh vegetables and fruits-grown on the new prison grounds when possible, along with bread and very basic, plain yet healthy fare should be provided. if monolithic micro-domes are selected then prisoners would sleep on the floor with a mat and fiber optic video surveillance would be ubiquitous. prisoners should learn a non-aggressive, secure, ecologically rational, renewable lifestyle while incarcerated. Perhaps they could actually be helpful to society when they 'graduated', even if they are not qualified to work in traditional occupations directly. If they are generally better people than they were, their addition to society would be a plus rather than more usual corruption in the usual environmental deficit producing economy.