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“It is my hope that this realization will produce an effort to create a rational and efficient sentencing scheme in California, one where sentences are proportional to the crime and each other.”
You can imagine the flack the PLO catches for advocating on behalf of prisoners (“prisoners are unpopular,” Specter says in a voice as unassuming as the bare walls of his office), but you would be surprised by his list of supporters. Prison wardens cite the political nature of prisons in California as the reason why they sometimes cannot make changes and improvements to their own facilities. But when a court decision forces their hand, politics or no politics, they are compelled to comply. Improved conditions mean resources for programs, incentives for inmates that make the prison environment a safer space for everyone—inmates, guards, administrators, and society.
“Essentially there’s a power vacuum when it comes to prisoners’ rights,” he says. “There’s nothing in the political process other than through legislative action. Students have teachers, medical care has doctors, but there’s nothing equivalent in law enforcement.”
Attorneys’ fees from the state keep PLO in operation, though Specter often wonders why the state would contest litigation aimed at improving conditions of inhumanity. He has made a career of wrestling with the problem of prisons and hopes society will begin to take up the issue with greater vigilance, compassion, and concern. Most people who go to prison will be released, he says, and it is likely that walking down the street of an urban center means walking past someone who has spent time locked up. For him, the state should be committed to creating community programs that prevent crime, developing reasonable sentencing terms, and focusing on efforts to rehabilitate. He likens his work to pushing a rock up a hill that keeps getting steeper.
“It doesn’t surprise me that he quietly sticks with it,” says Suzanne Mounts, a USF professor of law who first encountered Specter when he worked in the Criminal Law Clinic as a student. “He’s very steadfast, not in it for the glory and life in the limelight. The problems are so compelling and the political resistance to change so intense that we need an outside organization like the Prison Law Office to keep pressure on the system. Human beings who get locked up, yes, they’ve done some bad things, but they’re human beings, and there is a lot more to them than the bad things they’ve done.”
USF Law Professor Steven F. Shatz believes that students like Specter emerged in the law school at a time when new faculty arrived with backgrounds in legal services and public defense programs. They had come of age in the ’60s and joined the academic ranks in the ’70s. In the last decade under Dean Jeff Brand the school has made its commitment to social justice even stronger, Shatz says.
“A lot of people do something in the public interest and then they’re done because of the money,” Shatz says. “Instead, Don is able to commit to something unique and self-supporting. And usually, he has been successful. Don, more than anyone else working in the field, deserves the credit for the reforms of the past 25 years in the California prison system.”
The work does not come without its frustrations. Some litigation lasts decades and the constant refusal of the state to do the right thing takes its toll, Specter says.
“Some of the stories you hear, they are heartbreaking.” He pauses before adding, “There always seems to be some new challenge. We’re growing, our influence is growing. It’s been worthwhile.”
more: A Voice for Prison Reform 1 2
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