The Golden State's iron bars: how California prison guards became the country's most powerful union.

• Author: Cavanaugh, Tim

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"TO BORROW from Martin Luther King Jr.," the head of the California prison guards union said a few years ago, "today I have a dream. I have a dream that the bricks and mortar that were planned to build new prisons will instead be used to build new schools...that an ounce of prevention will be embraced instead of a pound of cure."

The place was the 2007 California Democratic convention. The speaker was Mike Jimenez, who had become president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) in 2002. Jimenez was attempting to set a new tone for the prison guards, who under his predecessor Don Novey had become the Golden State's most powerful, feared, and obstructive public-sector union. And in at least one way, Jimenez succeeded: The tone of CCPOA became far more moderate than it had been under Novey's hard-line leadership.

Unfortunately, the group's actual behavior has changed barely, if at all. The prison guards union regularly makes seven-figure contributions both to political candidates and to ballot initiative campaigns, nearly all of it with the goal of preventing any decline in the state's bulging prison population. CCPOA gave $1 million to the successful 2008 campaign against Proposition 5, which would have reduced sentences and parole times for nonviolent drug offenders while emphasizing drug treatment over prison. The initiative failed by nearly 20 percentage points.

To maintain California's prison-industrial complex, CCPOA must also plow money into broader defenses of the status quo. In 2008 the union gave $250,000 to fight a legislative redistricting referendum and $2 million to oppose a change to the state's political term limit laws.

The union is no respecter of political party, having made large contributions to both Democratic and Republican governors and to legislative candidates from both parties. It has plenty of money to spare: According to a 2005 study by the Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice, CCPOA collects $21.9 million per year from its 31,000 members.

The prison guards' guild, which came into its current form only in the 1980s, can make such effective and generous contributions in part thanks to its unique organizing model. By remaining unaffiliated with other unions, CCPOA keeps more direct control over its own funds, allowing it to reward friends and punish enemies (though these two categories can shift over time). It funds and supports numerous PACs and tough-on-crime...