The Only Agreement on Crime: No Easy Answers : Law enforcement: Officials paint a bleak future for the short term, differ on possible long-term solutions.

With narcotics use rampant, the gap between haves and have-nots will widen as crime and violence swell. Class conflict will engulf Los Angeles, pitting the able against those debilitated by drug abuse.

This is 1995 as Sheriff Sherman Block envisions it.

“When the people reach a point where they realize that the government cannot provide them safety,” Block said, “they’re going to take that responsibility unto themselves.”

Such a bleak picture is hardly the sheriff’s alone. Many other authorities contend that the criminal justice system, overloaded and overwhelmed, is caught in a tailspin from which it cannot recover--at least in the near future.

“Are we going to change anything in five or 10 years? The answer is no,” said Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner. “There is no short-term resolution to the underlying decay that has been going on for so long.”

The question, then, is how the criminal justice system in the long run can both deter people who would break the law and handle more effectively those who already have?

The solutions, experts suggest, may be as complex as national economics, as esoteric as acupuncture or as simple as teaching a child to say no to drugs.

Much of what explains the plight of criminal justice today lies beyond the police and courts, authorities are quick to point out. The growing number of single-parent households, violence on television, reduced funding for social and recreational programs in the inner-city--all are said to contribute in varying degrees to the problem.

“So many young people grow up today without a conscience, without a moral compass” said City Atty. James K. Hahn. “They’re like Pinocchio without Jiminy Cricket. You can’t expect police, prosecutors, judges and jailers to fix that.”

Another theory holds that economics largely determines the course of crime. Should economic conditions worsen, some academicians believe, there will be greater incentive for poor people to rob and steal.

Still others suggest that the age of the population dictates the rise and fall of crime. Their premise is that young people commit more than their share of unlawful acts. That, they say, helps explain why violence soared in the 1960s and 1970s, as post-World War II baby boomers entered the peak age group for committing crime--mid-teens to early 20s.

With the children of baby boomers now reaching their teens, the nation should brace for a new crime wave--or so the premise goes.

“In a sense, we’re now in almost a lull,” said criminologist Alfred Blumstein of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie-Mellon University, among the theory’s leading advocates. “It’s not as bad as it’s going to be when we really get into the ‘90s.”

These and similar predictions come at a time when Californians have shown a resolve to fight crime with tough new laws but appear disinclined to foot the cost.

Witness the November elections: With law enforcement officials pleading for more resources, voters in Los Angeles overwhelmingly rejected every state and local initiative that would have raised funds for new jails and prisons.

“There is no great golden pot at the end of the rainbow,” said Robert S. Mimura, executive director of the Los Angeles Countywide Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee. “If we achieve anything, it’s going to have to be with a reallocation of resources, making the system more efficient than it is. . . .”

A panacea to the ills that plague criminal justice today does not exist, Mimura and others stress. There is, however, no shortage of recommendations, experiments and innovations to consider.

Here are but a few:

Drugs

Clearly, no other issue has had a more significant impact on the criminal justice system than the proliferation of street drugs and drug-related crimes.

Of all adult felony arrests made last year in Los Angeles County, 56% were for drug law violations, according to California Department of Justice figures. About seven out of every 10 people arrested in Los Angeles today, from traffic offenders to suspected murderers, have narcotics in their blood at the time, judges and police say.

Some observers, including former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, columnist William F. Buckley and economist Milton Friedman, have publicly suggested the “decriminalization” of drugs. Aggressive enforcement of anti-drug laws, they and others believe, have only prompted narcotics-related crimes and jammed court dockets, while inhibiting cocaine and heroin addicts who might otherwise seek rehabilitation.

Few, if any, local authorities are willing to publicly advocate the legalization of drugs, but some suggest privately that there may be no other recourse to reduce the pressures that are straining the criminal justice system.

Short of legalization, the best way to lighten the loads of police, prosecutors and judges, many believe, is to reduce consumer demand for crack cocaine and other narcotics. This strategy underpins Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) and other programs in which police help teach school-aged children how to avoid drugs.

Launched by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1983, DARE programs have spread to 3,500 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states. Recent nationwide surveys have shown that drug use among high school students, after more than doubling between 1975 and 1988, has declined in the last two years, but authorities say it may be too soon to know whether anti-drug education is responsible.

In Miami, court officials believe that they have found a truly viable solution to drug abuse--use of acupuncture on addicts.

People arrested in Miami for the first time on drug possession charges are given the option of going to court and facing jail or attending a year of outpatient counseling and treatment, the key aspect of which is having needles regularly inserted in each of their ears.

“It seems to lessen the craving for crack cocaine,” said Judge Herbert M. Klein, who devised the program. “It quiets the person down, makes them more amenable to treatment.”

More than 1,400 arrestees have completed the treatment since June, 1989, when the program began, or are presently enrolled. Only about 3%, Klein said, have been rearrested on drug charges.

Gangs

In 1985, there were an estimated 45,000 gang members in Los Angeles County. Today, there are 90,000. Despite a myriad of get-tough efforts by police, street gangs are not only growing in number but in violence: more than one out of every three homicides countywide are gang-related today compared to one in 10 in 1980.

If forceful law enforcement does not deter street hoodlums, what will? Grudgingly, but increasingly, police officials say that the solution also must incorporate better schools, recreational opportunities, counseling programs and jobs.

“Law enforcement (alone) cannot break the cycle,” Block said, “only social improvements can break it.”

Many sociologists point to the late 1970s and cutbacks in government-funded programs when offering explanations of why gangs in Los Angeles have proliferated. With limited educational and employment opportunities, they contend, many young people have joined gangs for lack of anything else to occupy their time.

Wholesale roundups of suspected gang members, most notably the Los Angeles Police Department’s recurrent “Operation Hammer,” have only worsened the situation, some say, because arrests often are followed with little or no jail time.

“These people,” Block said, “often are right back on the street more cocky than ever with the system’s inability to handle them.”

The social improvements that Block proposes come with a hefty price tag. With increasingly tight fiscal constraints, some Los Angeles officials say that funds might be derived from California Lottery proceeds, telethons or private, fund-raising campaigns.

Others, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman, have suggested that programs to pacify gangs might best come from the budgets of police agencies.

“Since law enforcement is failing in this war,” Edelman said recently, “we need to put money into imaginative social programs.”

The Police

Los Angeles needs more police officers, according to Chief Daryl F. Gates--not necessarily because of crime but because the criminal justice system is failing.

“I don’t think there’s a situation in Los Angeles I couldn’t handle right now if I had the jails,” said Gates.

His officers could make many more arrests, he said, “but I don’t want to load up the system.”

The “hue and cry” among many citizens for more police could prove “self-defeating,” Gates said, because more officers would produce more arrests, even further overwhelming the courts and jails.

Nonetheless, Gates said he believes that additional officers would improve “the kind of service we think (Los Angeles residents) ought to get. People shouldn’t have to put up with the car being stolen or broken into, but we reach a point where we are unable to deal with the mass of calls--it just keeps going up and up and up.”

Could harder work by present members of the department or an increase in departmental strength reduce crime?

A 1967 study by the President’s Crime Commission estimated that a police officer on routine patrol in Los Angeles could expect to detect a burglary in progress once every three months and happen upon a robbery every 14 years.

After the number of patrol cars were doubled and tripled during a 1973 experiment in some areas of Kansas City, Mo., researchers concluded that, “routine . . . patrol in marked cars has little value in preventing crime.”

Such studies, experts say, demonstrate the limitations of law enforcement.

“We--police officials, government leaders, citizens, all of us--would do well to abandon our quixotic faith that there is a police solution to the problem of criminal violence,” wrote criminologist Charles E. Silberman in his 1978 treatise, “Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice.”

Short of creating a police state, putting more officers on the street would not make a measureable dent in street crime, according to Silberman and others.

More could be achieved, they say, through closer interaction between civilians and the police.

Most crimes, in fact, are not solved by detectives sifting through evidence, but by ordinary citizens who come forward with information that leads police to a suspect.

“Members of the public have a critical role to play in crime control,” San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara has said. “They are far more likely to play that role if the cop is someone they know and like, instead of his being a brusque, aloof, stranger.”

Juvenile Justice

By the time most criminals are sent to prison for burglary, robbery or worse, they already have been arrested and convicted for crimes committed as juveniles.

In Los Angeles, the first arrest usually ends with the juvenile being admonished by police officers and released.

Arrested and convicted after that, he will probably be granted probation and ordered to stay home under parental supervision.

Arrested and convicted again, he may spend a few weeks in a juvenile hall or work camp.

Arrested and convicted a fourth time, he might be committed to the California Youth Authority.

When he reaches adulthood, authorities say, it may be too late to change his criminal ways by sending him to prison.

“The juvenile system is operating backwards,” said D.A. Reiner. “You don’t stake a tree when it is already grown and twisted, but when it is a sapling. The juvenile justice system affirmatively creates habitual criminals even as it is trying to be compassionate.”

The concept of leniency extended to young offenders, Reiner and other critics contend, enforces criminal behavior by essentially teaching offenders that the system will tolerate all but the most heinous crimes.

A long-term study released this year by the state Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem stressed that youths should be punished with a “reasonable sanction to every criminal act, regardless of how minor.”

Forcing a youngster to face the consequences of his criminal actions, the study concluded, would make him more accountable, enhance his self-esteem and deter him from future criminal behavior.

“By the time we get very serious about these people, they have developed a pattern or lifestyle of criminal behavior that is difficult to break,” said Sheriff Block. “We have to do it quicker and with greater certainty.”

There already may be steps toward that end.

Paul Boland, Los Angeles County’s presiding juvenile judge, pointed out that the number of criminal petitions filed in court countywide against juveniles has risen from 29,000 in 1988 to 35,000 this year.

At the same time, Boland said, the percentage of juvenile offenders ordered home on probation has declined while percentages have increased for those sent to county-run camps or to the California Youth Authority--the juvenile equivalent of prison.

The Courts

Prosecutors commonly complain that one reason they must plea bargain with criminals is that there are not enough courtrooms to try them all.

But most courtrooms are under-utilized in Los Angeles County.

In New York, many courts operate well into the night. In Los Angeles County, only three of about 100 criminal courtrooms are open after 5 p.m. All three are in the Criminal Courts Building downtown, where nearly 20% of California’s felony crimes are adjudicated, and are used almost exclusively for prosecuting low-level drug cases.

Those opposed to it, many judges among them, insist that expanding night court operations would not be cost-effective. It would also, they insist, inconvenience and possibly endanger jurors who would be required to venture out after dark.

Privately, some judges say that they oppose night courts because it would inconvenience them and require that they share their chambers with judges assigned the night shift.

While many Superior Court judges adhere to rigorous work schedules, others do not. A few assigned to the Criminal Courts Building are rarely in chambers or on the bench before 9:30 a.m., frequently take two-hour lunch breaks and are gone by 4 p.m., according to judges and attorneys.

On Friday afternoons, the corridors of the courthouse are deserted as many judges get early starts on their weekends. The Times checked downtown courtrooms of all Superior Court judges assigned to criminal matters on random Friday afternoons throughout 1990. On average, nearly half were closed by 2 p.m.

Other authorities contend that court performance could be improved by limiting “continuances,” in which judges agree to put off hearings, trials and sentencings at the request of attorneys. A recent study by County Clerk Frank S. Zolin found that in a three-month period in 1988, Superior Court judges granted 22,717 continuances without following procedures intended to limit such delays.

“The snail’s pace of many cases is not because of resources,” D.A. Reiner said, “but because of attitude. Aside from the statute of limitations, no deadline (in court) is taken seriously. Prosecutors are just as much to blame, but judges are even more to blame.”

Judges, however, offer statistics showing that they are processing more criminal cases than ever and moving them through the system at record pace--usually by accepting plea bargains that have been negotiated sooner. Speed is essential because for every defendant sent to prison or released on probation, there is more jail space for new arrestees.

To further speed cases through the system, a court executive committee announced just this week that criminal court judges will soon begin proceedings one-half hour early, at 8:30 a.m., to expedite the flow of cases.

“The judges already are doing an heroic job in a thankless situation,” said Presiding Judge Richard Byrne.

Prosecutorial Discretion

In Ventura County, longtime Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury has a “no plea bargain” policy.

That is not to say all criminal cases in Ventura County are settled by juries.

It means that prosecutors are more selective in choosing the charges they file in each case. Once a charge is filed, a defendant is told that he must plead guilty to that charge or go to trial.

Ventura County prosecutors then leave it up to the judge to decide the appropriate sentence, rather than agreeing upon a sentence and having the judge, in effect, rubber stamp the agreement--the way virtually all Superior Court cases are settled in Los Angeles.

The strategy, Ventura County prosecutors say, produces tougher punishment. According to the state Board of Prison Terms, the median prison sentence imposed in Ventura County for all crimes is 48 months, compared to 28 months in Los Angeles.

Before Ventura County’s methods could begin to work in Los Angeles, experts say, prosecutors assigned to the county’s 11 courthouses would first have to reach a consensus on what charges to file for various types of offenses. For instance, should a robber who was armed with a gun be charged with “armed with a firearm,” punishable by up to three years in prison, or “personal use of a firearm,” punishable by up to five years?

“I don’t know if you could impose that kind of system in Los Angeles simply because it is so large,” said Gary Mullen, executive director of the California Dist. Atty.’s Assn. “It’s not like one big office. There are almost separate cultures office-to-office on what a crime is worth.”

The caseload of prosecutors in Los Angeles today may also preclude adopting Ventura County’s hard-line approach to negotiating pleas, Mullen added.

“In San Luis Obispo, if you’ve committed one petty theft and you commit another one, they regularly charge that as a felony,” Mullen said. “If you tried that in Los Angeles as a felony, you’d have gridlock tomorrow.”

Jails and Alternatives

By the year 2010, Los Angeles County’s population is expected to reach 9.6 million. The county’s jail population, meanwhile, is projected to climb to nearly 44,000--double the number of men and women presently incarcerated.

Already the Sheriff’s Department each month must let loose thousands of convicted criminals before they have finished their sentences to make room for the newly arrested.

There are only about 23,000 beds in the county’s jail system and under a federal court order, no more can be added without expanding existing facilities or building new ones.

“Locking up all the customers . . . can’t be done,” said Mark A. Cuniff, executive director of the National Assn. of Criminal Justice Planners. “Society is not willing to pay the bill.”

Others, including Chief Gates, believe that additional facilities to house criminals must be built.

“We don’t have to construct them to last into the 22nd Century . . . but we do need to build them,” Gates said. “ . . . We’ve got to get over this nonsense that building prisons and jails is an endless task. There is a finite number of people who commit crime and if we can take care of them . . . crime will level off.”

Gates suggested that instead of building new facilities, officials might consider converting existing structures, such as “Air Force bases in the desert,” to house law breakers.

Officials in the San Joaquin Valley believe they have found another, less expensive, alternative to building more jails.

Since December, 1989, judges in Madera County have ordered more than 150 lawbreakers, including convicted felons, to serve their sentences at home rather than in the county’s jail.

To make sure the lawbreaker is at home when he is supposed to be (most are permitted to work or attend school), a computer monitor and special telephone equipment have been installed in each residence. A central computer at the Madera County Parole Department then telephones each home, sometimes as often as four random times throughout the day and night.

After answering the phone, the person is instructed to look into the computer monitor and strike one of more than a dozen different poses. His image is then transmitted to the parole department, where officers confirm that the picture and the lawbreaker are one in the same.

Daulton Wisener, who supervises the computer program, said it costs $5.25 a day per person to run it. It costs $45 a day, he noted, to keep an inmate in Madera County’s jail.

Other counties, including Los Angeles, have limited electronic home detention programs, in which people convicted of crimes wear ankle or wrist transmitters that alert authorities when they have left home, but the equipment is often prone to break down, according to Wisener and others.

“This,” he said of Madera County’s program, “is the wave of the future.”

Probation

There may be little to improve general probation supervision in Los Angeles County without a major infusion of funds to hire more probation officers, officials say.

By California law, the probation department must prepare pre-sentence reports on all defendants convicted in Superior Court. But the department is under no legal obligation to provide supervision to all defendants once they are released on probation.

Some probation officers believe that to maintain any semblance of supervision, given present budget constraints, they must concentrate supervision on only the most dangerous felons.

Still others contend that it is only a matter of time before the probation department gets out of the supervision business altogether. It is, said Probation Administrator Carol Koelle, “inevitable.”

To fill whatever void may be left, Gates has proposed that the police supervise criminals who have been released on probation.

The probation department’s mission, Gates believes, should be directed toward keeping young offenders from becoming full-blown criminals, leaving supervision of hardened felons to police officers.

Under Gates’ plan, individuals on probation would be required to carry special identification cards. Failure to carry or provide the card to a police officer upon demand would result in arrest.

The terms of probation would be computerized and available to officers whenever they stopped a probationer on the streets.

“It’s time,” Gates said, “we put the authority for enforcing the conditions of probation where it belongs--with police officers who witness the probation violations firsthand.”

The Times Poll: The Future

In the coming decade, Los Angeles’ criminal justice system will decline or remain the same but will not improve, say an overwhelming majority of police, prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers and Superior Court judges surveyed by the Times Poll.

When asked about the system’s future ability to administer “swift and sure” justice, only Municipal Court judges expressed a relatively optimistic view, with 54% saying the system will improve.

Public defenders appear to be most pessimistic about the system’s future, with 70% saying that it will decline or stay the same in the next 10 years.

Much of their outlook may be influenced by the fact that public defenders rarely win cases and see their clients exonerated. The vast majority of the accused criminals they represent are convicted after agreeing to plead guilty in exchange for lesser sentences.

Still, most public defenders surveyed--as with a great majority of judges, prosecutors, police and probation officers, said they were generally satisfied with their jobs.

The question of how best to improve criminal justice in Los Angeles drew some consensus--with exceptions--among those within the system.

Relatively few, for example, believe there is need for more prosecutors, tougher laws or programs to rehabilitate criminals.

Is there need for more courts? Majorities of all groups surveyed and nearly half of probation officers agreed there is.

What about additional jails? Most municipal court judges, prosecutors and police rated additional jail space as among the highest priorities.

Would more police officers help? Only majorities of prosecutors and police officers themselves believe that bolstering the force would prove beneficial.

Over the next 10 years, do you think the criminal justice system will improve in its ability to administer justice that is “swift and sure?”

Municipal Superior Public Probation Judges Judges Defenders Prosecutors Officers System Will Improve 54% 30% 21% 38% 38% System Will Decline 19 27 45 30 27 Will Remain Same 18 34 25 22 29 Not Sure 8 8 7 8 5 Refused 1 1 2 2 1

Police System Will Improve 34% System Will Decline 31 Will Remain Same 28 Not Sure 7 Refused 0

All things considered, would you say you are satisfied or dissatisfied with your work today?

Municipal Superior Public Probation Judges Judges Defenders Prosecutors Officers Satisfied 90% 87% 81% 89% 79% Dissatisfied 7 11 16 9 19 Neutral 0 0 2 0 2 Not Sure 3 2 1 2 0

Police Satisfied 88% Dissatisfied 11 Neutral 1 Not Sure 0

Recommended solution to help solve the problems of the criminal justice system:*

Municipal Superior Public Judges Judges Defenders Prosecutors More Courts/Judges 71% 78% 63% 77% More Jails 65 43 20 64 More Police 44 46 18 51 Higher Salaries for Police 16 15 9 14 Better Prosecutors 12 19 23 10 Preventative Programs 9 16 30 8 Tougher Laws 6 2 1 10 Rehab. Programs 6 9 23 4 Don’t Know 2 6 2 3

Probation Officers Police More Courts/Judges 49% 56% More Jails 44 76 More Police 43 60 Higher Salaries for Police 12 13 Better Prosecutors 12 10 Preventative Programs 20 6 Tougher Laws 32 24 Rehab. Programs 14 3 Don’t Know 0 2

* Adds to more than 100% due to multiple responses.

Source: Los Angeles Times Poll