California Elections : Prison Bond Issue: Voters Are Asked to Ante Up Again

“I believe they’ll vote for this one,” said Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), “but if we have to go back to them again in two or three or four years, they may begin to say enough is enough.”

Presley uttered those words of caution in 1984, shortly before the June election in which voters approved the sale of $300 million in bonds for state prison construction. Two years before that, in June, 1982, the electorate had authorized the sale of $495 million in prison construction bonds.

Now, voters will be asked Nov. 4 to approve the sale of another $500 million in bonds for prison construction, and Presley, co-author of the measure and one of its official proponents, acknowledges that “there’s no end in sight.”

The official ballot pamphlet arguments do not say so, but proponents and opponents of Proposition 54 agree that if voters approve the measure, state officials will continue to go back to the electorate again and again with similar measures to build more penitentiaries to hold an ever-growing convict population.

“I’d say they’re going to see (prison) bond issues the next couple of years,” said Dennis D. Dunne, state Department of Corrections deputy director of planning and construction. “I think we’re going to see bond issues as long as people are willing to put dollars into building prisons.”

Presley and state prison officials say that even if the penitentiary project is completed by the target date of 1990, the system will remain overcrowded, and that in addition to the need for bond money for more prison construction, operating funds will have to come from other state services, possibly education.

If Proposition 54 passes, 10% of the money is to go to the California Youth Authority for construction of a new facility for juveniles. But the great bulk of the funds is earmarked as another installment toward paying for California’s adult prison construction program, the largest public project to be undertaken in the state since the massive California Water Project.

If the measure should fail--and there is no such indication--state prison officials say they would be forced to take another look at the program, which currently carries a $2-billion-plus price tag.

“If the voters don’t vote for the bonds this time,” Dunne said, “then the government is going to have to reassess the public’s attitude about being tough on crime.”

But, he added, “So far when we go out and talk to people all we hear is, ‘You’re not tough enough on crime. . . . Judges let criminals out too soon.’ ”

In response to this attitude, legislators over the last several years have vied with one another to pass tougher and tougher sentencing laws, causing the penitentiary population to grow at a rate easily outstripping new construction.

In 1982, the state’s penitentiaries were operating at 128% of design capacity, with 29,600 convicts crowded into space meant for 23,200.

Since then, about 9,400 new cells have been added to the system. Even so, last month the prisons were operating at 170% of capacity, with more than 55,000 inmates jammed into space for 32,600.

Prison gymnasiums and other available rooms have been turned into dormitories and tents are being used to house prisoners. Thousands of other convicts are being locked two to a cell in cells designed for one inmate. Prison violence is epidemic. State and federal courts have ordered extensive renovation projects and improvements of poor conditions partly caused by overcrowding.

In the meantime, the state crime rate, after a modest decline, is rising again.

Worsening Situation

In 1982, the Department of Corrections’ prison construction plans, under then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., were priced at about $1 billion to provide 12,000 new prison cells or bed spaces. The cost of the updated project, which includes 11 new prisons, is now set at more than $2 billion and will provide about 26,000 new beds when completed. The entire system has a design capacity of 58,500 inmates.

But, even if the project is finished by the target date of 1990--and with the difficulty in locating new prison sites, that seems unlikely--the system will be overcrowded by nearly 140%, according to recent projections by the private, nonprofit National Council on Crime and Delinquency. The convict population will continue swelling, reaching more than 100,000, or 180% of design capacity, by 1995, according to the council study.

By then, 25 more prisons--in addition to those now planned--will be needed, the study says.

“People are complaining of (locating) one prison in Los Angeles,” said Jim Austin, director of research for the crime council. “They had better get used to the idea of four or five, because that’s what it’s going to come to.”

The Department of Corrections has unofficially concluded that the convict population will increase even faster than the council predicts.

Lease-Back Arrangements

Along with its expected share of the $500 million on the Nov. 4 ballot and the $795 million in prison bond issues already passed, the Department of Corrections plans to help finance the construction project with $609 million borrowed through procedures called lease-purchase or lease-back. These procedures are similar to the sale of general obligation bonds, but require only legislative, not voter, approval. Interest rates to pay back such loans are normally higher than voter-approved general obligation bonds.

Repayment of the $500 million being sought on the November ballot would take 20 years and, with interest, cost an estimated $860 million.

And the price of paying back the loans to build the prisons does not include the cost of operating the prisons once they are built.

The Department of Corrections estimates that the operating cost of a prison over its 70-year life span costs more than 15 times the amount it takes to build it, not counting inflation. The true cost of the state prison project--assuming no overcrowding and no inflation--would be about $30 billion, according to this formula.

Department Budget Growing

During the last four years, the annual budget for the Department of Corrections has grown from $500,000 to $1.2 billion and is expected to top $2 billion before 1990, according to state prison officials.

With legal restrictions on the rate of state government spending soon coming into effect as a result of a 1979 ballot initiative to limit appropriations, the money to operate the expanding prison system will have to come at the expense of other state services, according to Presley.

“We’re getting to the point that we may have to be cutting things like education,” he said, adding that he sees no acceptable alternative.

“How can you afford not to (build prisons)?” Presley asked. “The first thing you have to do in a society is law and order. You have to have that before you have commerce, recreation, travel. . . .”

Prisoner Releases

Proponents argue that funds for new prisons are needed to forestall court-mandated releases of convicts from overcrowded penitentiaries, as has happened in other states.

Supporters of the bond issue also contend that even if the new prisons are overcrowded, their modern designs will make it more feasible to handle large numbers of convicts than the older penitentiaries. Moreover, they say, new prison construction means more jobs.

But Austin of the crime council insists that simply building more prisons without alternatives is ineffective and uneconomical.

“The analogy,” he said, “is that with prisons you’re trying to treat diarrhea by building more toilets. . . . We’re going to exhaust all our money by building prisons and we won’t be any safer than when we began.”

Austin points to crime council statistics indicating that blacks are nine times as likely to be sent to prison as whites, and that Latinos are three times as likely to be imprisoned as non-Latino whites.

“If they had an incarceration rate the same as whites,” Austin said, “we wouldn’t be having a prison overcrowding problem. . . .

“Whatever the reasons, we have to find ways to reduce their participation in criminal behavior and that certainly means money for better education. . . .”

Shorter Prison Terms

In the meantime, Austin recommends that prison terms be cut by several months to reduce the convict population.

But no one expects the Legislature to take such an action.

Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Hawthorne), the only official opponent of the prison bond issue listed on the ballot pamphlet, bases his objections mainly on his contention that the Department of Corrections is too inept to be trusted with a multibillion-dollar building project, that the program could be handled more efficiently and economically by the office of the state architect and that Gov. George Deukmejian should finance it through state budget surpluses.

But even though Floyd believes that overly tough sentencing laws are leading to prison overcrowding and the need to build more and more penitentiaries, he is not advocating progressive approaches to penology.

“The way we’re going,” he said, “you’re going to get 20 years for jaywalking or spitting on the sidewalk. But if that’s what the people want. . . .

“If you start to show some leadership and point these things out, the guy running against you says you’re soft on crime, that you want these robbers and murderers and rapists on the street. And not too many legislators want that reputation. I sure don’t.”