New Forecast Sees a Worse Jam in Prisons

In a setback to efforts to bring the mushrooming California prison population to manageable levels by 1995, the Deukmejian Administration is forecasting a surprise surge in prisoners that could touch off another frenetic round of prison construction.

State Director of Corrections James Rowland disclosed in a letter made public Monday that revised projections show that by June, 1994, the prison population will total 136,640. That would be 26,410 more than had been estimated only last fall.

“The resulting systemwide overcrowding level will be approximately 213% (of capacity) after completion of all currently authorized projects,” Rowland said in a gloomy assessment prepared for Sen. Robert B. Presley (D-Riverside), chairman of the legislative committee supervising the state’s aggressive prison construction program.

Presley, who also chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the population projections indicated a need for construction of about 15 more prisons in addition to those already underway or planned.

Currently, the California inmate population, housed in 18 prisons and 38 conservation camps and various community facilities, totals 82,181. The prisons are at 168% of their design capacity, excluding such overnight facilities as community halfway houses and return-to-custody centers.

A department spokesman, Mike Van Winkle, said it is not certain what circumstances will fuel the projected surge. But he noted that the convict population has soared recently by a net 400 to 500 a week.

“Taking those increases into consideration, our projections brought us to 136,640 in June, 1994,” he said.

Presley, who made Rowland’s June 22 letter public, said Monday the unanticipated influx of prisoners threatens to return the state’s $3.2-billion program of accelerated prison construction “almost back to Square No. 1.”

Presley noted that the Administration had set an informal deadline of 1995 to reduce the convict population to 110% or 120% of the system’s capacity. “That is a manageable figure,” he said.

But Presley said the forecast of a still bigger population portends that “instead of seeing a little light at the end of the tunnel, we are just in a continuing crisis as we have been in the last 10 years and now it is being exacerbated.

“Now we’re back to the drawing boards, trying to find sites and trying to find the money,” he said, noting that sites have become more difficult to find and that bond issues to finance more prisons may be tougher to obtain as prisons compete with other bond projects, such as parks.

Presley noted that it currently costs almost $2 billion a year to operate the prison system and that additional operating funds would have to come at the expense of other “critical needs,” such as health, welfare, housing, transportation, education and environmental protection.

Rowland did not discuss in his letter why the projected population would increase so dramatically in the next five years, but Presley put the blame on criminal use of drugs.

“I think the big driving force is drugs,” Presley said. “The drug problem just seems to be overshadowing almost everything else in the criminal arena. I would surmise that (the department) did not project the seriousness of that when it made the previous projections.”

Presley said many convicts are imprisoned in the first place for drug-related crimes and many return after they are paroled because of drug involvement. Officials estimate that parole violators account for 34% of the prison population.

Rowland also reported a predicted shortage of prisoner bed space “of emergency proportions in the near future.”

He said that since Jan. 1, the prison system has “experienced unprecedented weekly increases” and by July 1, 1990, “all of the available day room and gymnasium space will have to be converted to accommodate the number of inmates that will be in the system.”

Rowland said officials are preparing an “update” for the state’s prison master plan that will reflect both short- and long-term efforts to handle the unexpected population increase and the substantial additional costs.

Under Gov. George Deukmejian, California embarked six years ago on an ambitious prison construction program after a hiatus of two decades. Currently, there are 18 prisons in operation, three under construction and five are authorized but unbuilt, including two in Los Angeles County.

At the same time, the governor and Legislature have been waging a legislative war on crime. Among other things, they created new crimes punishable by prison terms, imposed longer terms for a variety of other crimes, and restricted the discretion judges have to send offenders to already overcrowded local jails instead of state prison.

Kevin Brett, Deukmejian’s press secretary, said the projected increases in inmates “certainly sends a signal to the Legislature that it should not cut back the budget of the Department of Corrections. There could not be a poorer time to cut back.”

Deukmejian on June 17 called on the Legislature to “fully fund our state prison system,” deploring as inadequate the sums proposed by both the Senate and Assembly.

He more recently asked legislative budget writers to include an extra $100 million in the proposed state spending program for the Department of Corrections to help deal with the rapid increase of inmates in the upcoming fiscal year. The budget writers cut the sum by $28.7 million.

CROWDED PRISONS-- New studies suggest an alarming increase in the population of state prisons. The forecast projects a prison population at 136,640 in only four years, an increase of 26,410 inmates over last fall’s projection. Officials say this represents an overcrowding level of 213% even after all of the currently authorized prison construction projects are completed.

Design bed capacity represents the total number of inmates that can be accommodated at a prison, presuming single-occupancy of cells and dormitory beds; does not include community beds.