CALIFORNIA COLLAGE

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California Runs Out of Jail Space as Voters Worry More About Schools than Crime

By Mary Ellen Leary

Date: 12-11-96

With prisons jammed to capacity after the state's much-ballyhooed crackdown on crime, California voters jarred the pundits by voting down a $700 million bond issue to expand jail capacity last month. Recent polling results and votes on other issues indicate that the vote may reflect a change in priorities. PNS correspondent Mary Ellen Leary, a veteran political observer of California, writes for the London-based Economist.

For over twenty years polls in California have placed crime as Public Worry Number one. Why, then, after a decade of endorsing punitive legislation that has prisons and jails bursting at the seams, did voters turn thumbs down last month on a $700 million bond issue to increase jail space?

"People are nutty," says one bewildered sheriff who runs the county jail. "They want to deal severely with criminals but they don't want to pay the cost."

State officials say that overcrowding has forced the early release of an average of 27,500 men and women each month from jails during the first half of the year for lack of space. The defeat of Prop 205 (the bond issue) will only make matters worse.

But other observers think maybe there was method to the nuttiness. Pollster Mark de Camillo of the Field Research Institute notes that recent polls show crime no longer leads the list of public worries: it is now in third place behind education and the economy.

It may be that the public now fears the vast expansion in prison spending is draining off funding for schools and they want to reverse gears. While the jail bond issue lost, for example, a school bond issue that will improve the ratio of teachers to students, won approval.

"Over the long run, I support that priority," says Merced County Sheriff Tom Sawyer, head of the California Sheriff's Association. "Education helps diminish crime. Most who come into our jails have a literacy problem. Because of this, they can't get jobs and can't function well."

But meanwhile, Sawyer says, he struggles every week with the fact that county budgets just haven't kept pace with the swelling number of suspects and convicted criminals he has to incarcerate. "Every week I have to sit down with the roster of my jail population and choose which ones can be released on their own recognizance -- that's what we're all forced to do," he admits.

Officials and public alike may not have counted on the cumulative impact of a decade of punitive legislation on incarceration rates -- especially in county jails. The Three Strikes measure, for example, which imposes a 25 years to life sentence for anyone receiving a third felony conviction, has increased the number of suspects charged with felonies who demand a jury trial. Those who cannot post bail must wait their day in court in the county jails.

Then, too, despite a moderate decrease in major crimes over the last several years, population growth has kept the total number of arrests at roughly the same level -- 570,803 in 1995. And with rising unemployment, a growing number of people charged with drunk driving and other minor violations now choose to go to jail rather than paying a fine.

The net effect of all this is that jails which held about 44,000 in the mid 1980s must now make room for some 72,000 inmates -- not counting the 27,500 released early each month. Sheriffs acknowledge that in most courtiers inmates are actually serving about 35 percent of their sentences. At the same time, federal courts have imposed a cap on jail populations in 23 California counties in response to inmate suits charging inhuman conditions.

The solution, Governor Pete Wilson argues , is to expand jail and prison space. Long the champion of prison construction, the governor was clearly astonished by the November vote and hints at fresh efforts next year.

But ultimately, the public may finally have realized what the Governor has not: California can't afford both a first rate educational system and the largest per capita prison population in the world. Something has to give. For now, at least, it appears to be funds needed to lock people up.