COLUMN ONE : Full Cells and Empty Pockets : California’s prisons remain massively overcrowded despite a construction surge. The cost of more expansion, amid a budget crisis, has renewed calls for reform.

David Dragna is back in prison.

For the 10th time.

This is what prison has taught him: “Nothing. It’s just getting easier. It doesn’t bother me.”

Convicts such as Dragna, a 29-year-old drug abuser and chronic parole violator, are a major reason that California’s prison construction program--the largest in history--remains woefully inadequate.

Dragna’s latest trip to the Central Receiving Center at Chino helped push California’s state prison population to an all-time high of 100,000 convicts last month. The inmate population is growing at a rate of more than 10,000 per year, the prisons are dangerously crowded and there is no end in sight.

The tab for housing all these inmates--not counting the cost of prison construction--is $2.1 billion a year and climbing.

These increasing prison costs, along with a critical state budget deficit, have refueled a long-simmering debate over the most effective way to deal with crime and punishment in California.

The debate pits reformers, who want to find cheaper alternatives to prisons, against hard-liners who want longer sentences and more penitentiaries. For the last decade, the hard-liners have had their way as the prison population increased nearly fourfold. But reformers are insisting that it is financially impractical to continue.

Reformers argue that it costs taxpayers more than $20,000 a year to keep an offender such as Dragna in prison. That’s about what it costs to send a student to USC or Stanford for a year and about three times the annual cost to attend UCLA.

Hard-liners respond that each felon who remains on the street costs society many times more than $20,000 per year and that tough sentencing policies eventually will discourage crime.

So far, however, the tough tactics seem to have had little, if any, effect on California’s crime rate. While state Department of Justice figures show that California’s overall crime rate dropped from 3,905 per 100,000 citizens in 1980 to 3,415 in 1989, violent crime rose during the same period from 883 per 100,000 citizens to 977.

Despite building nine prisons and substantially expanding several others since 1982, the state’s current 21-penitentiary system is so crowded that more than 100,000 inmates are housed in space designed for 54,000.

Prison officials predict that by the 1996 completion of all 17 prisons envisioned in the unprecedented $4-billion construction program, the system will hold more than twice the number of convicts for which it was designed. At that time, 163,100 inmates will be crammed into space designed for 74,700.

By the year 2000, the inmate population will top 200,000, according to prison officials. To operate at what officials consider an “acceptable” level of crowding--cramming every 125 inmates into space designed for 100--would require an additional 38 prisons, housing 2,200 inmates each, to be built within 10 years. The cost: $8.2 billion. Just finding locations for that number of prisons would be a major undertaking.

At the receiving center at Chino--where most Southern California convicts are evaluated and sent to other prisons around the state--more than 1,500 inmates are jammed into space designed for 628. More than 200 convicts are routinely crowded into the prison gymnasium, where they spend their days and nights on long rows of double bunk beds.

Double bunks also fill floor space between tiers of cells. Inside the cells, which are designed for one prisoner each, mattresses are squeezed into floor space next to built-in bunks so two convicts can share the tiny cubicles. Just inside the entrance to the prison, newly arrived convicts sit on the floor and lean against the wall of a long hallway, waiting to be processed. Sometimes new inmates wait outside in yards after being dropped off by county jail buses because there is no room inside the prison.

“Every day, whether we like it or not, county buses pull up to our door,” said John Dovey, program administrator at Chino. “We don’t have the luxury of saying, ‘Sorry, we’re full.’ ”

Prison officials say that new receiving centers will alleviate the crowding at Chino, but reformers contend that there is no way for the state to build its way out of the problem.

With the state convict population hitting six figures, a group of prison reform organizations have seized the moment to issue reports blasting the hard-line approach as an expensive failure.

The organizations include the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, the Prison Law Office, the California Alliance for Criminal Justice, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice.

Most of the organizations are longtime critics of state prison policy and have been on the losing side of the debate with hard-liners for the last decade or so. But the reformers took heart last fall when voters rejected a state ballot proposition seeking $450 million in prison construction bonds. Now, as politicians try to cope with a record state budget deficit while the cost of housing prisoners continues to rise, reformers feel the time for change is at hand.

“This whole corrections policy has been built on a house of cards,” said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. “And the house of cards is going to fall apart.”

Recommendations for reform include:

* A moratorium on new laws that increase sentences.

* Comprehensive sentencing reform that would, among other changes, allow parole officials more latitude in determining how long a prisoner must serve and create more sentencing options such as keeping offenders in drug treatment programs and in community settings.

* Changing the policy of sending parole violators back to prison for violations such as drug use.

* Early release of prisoners after they complete a program to prepare them for life in the community.

* Increasing work opportunities in prison that would enable inmates to reduce their sentences through “good time.”

State Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), a longtime proponent of some prison reform ideas, has introduced legislation calling for sentencing alternatives such as intensive community supervision and treatment for “nonviolent and low-level offenders” and drug abusers.

“The proposed legislation,” he wrote in support of the bill, “is based on the conclusion that primary reliance upon incarceration is not succeeding for tens of thousands of offenders in our jails and prisons, that they continue to contribute to crime in our communities and lower the quality of life in our neighborhoods, that new approaches must be taken to deal with the drug problems of these offenders. . . .

“We’ve got to do more,” he concluded, “than just try to build our way out of our prison crisis.”

Presley’s bill specifically excludes violent offenders and drug dealers from consideration for community alternatives.

The fate of the bill is uncertain and Gov. Pete Wilson has not taken a position on it.

But if the measure passes, it will not have an impact for several years and does not promise to solve the prison crisis.

“The major aim of that (bill), would not be to reduce the number of prison inmates, but to keep it from growing so fast,” said Robert E. Holmes, chief consultant to Presley’s Joint Committee on Prison Construction and Operations.

Reformers also have allies in legislators such as Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), who wrote the official ballot argument against November’s prison bond measure.

“The resort to prisons has no future,” Vasconcellos said. “The whole system needs revamping.”

Still, the tide in Sacramento runs toward measures that increase prison sentences rather than toward cutting the convict population.

Of the 225 bills sent to the Public Safety Committee of the Assembly this year, 67 were crime measures that would increase the prison population by lengthening sentences or upgrading misdemeanors to felonies. The bills attempt to deal with offenses ranging from rape to providing illegal drugs to pregnant women.

One legislative consultant calls these measures “newsletter bills” because they are presumably popular with the voters back home.

“There’s a reason it looks good to the folks back home,” said Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), “and that’s because the folks back home are the ones being preyed upon.”

McClintock, who in past years has introduced numerous anti-crime bills, maintains that tough sentencing works.

“I think it is clearly effective not only in deterring crime,” he said, “but in ensuring that there are not a lot of bad people out roaming the streets. . . .

“Those who want to empty the prisons forget the huge societal cost of having those criminals on the street,” he added.

McClintock agrees with reformers that the cost of housing inmates is exorbitant, but he recommends cutting costs by keeping many convicts in surplus military barracks and requiring them to work for their keep rather than releasing them to community settings. “Until we reform and economize the administration of the prisons, I think it is premature to talk about releasing anyone,” he said.

Most reform recommendations are aimed at property offenders, drug offenders or parolees who are returned to custody for parole violations, as opposed to inmates convicted of violent crimes.

State Department of Corrections statistics for 1989--the latest figures available--show that of 34,226 inmates admitted for new convictions that year, only 25% were convicted of violent crimes. Another 38% were sentenced for drug-related offenses and 30% were convicted of property crimes.

Because violent convicts generally receive considerably longer sentences than drug or property offenders, the typical inmate serving time differs somewhat from the average newcomer. A “snapshot” of the prison population on a given day would show that 42% of inmates were convicted of violent crimes, 28% for property offenses and 26% for drug-related crimes.

State figures also show that a newly admitted inmate is about as likely to have violated conditions of parole as to have been convicted of a crime.

In 1989, for example, parole violators accounted for 47% of all inmates admitted that year. Prison officials say that some of these parole violators also faced new criminal charges but had not yet been prosecuted.

State corrections officials agree with reformers that the criteria for revoking paroles should be re-examined. Many parolees are sent back for short prison stays for what are called “technical” violations such as failure to register with the police as drug offenders or failing drug tests.

“That’s an area I plan to spend time and effort on,” said Jim Gomez, a veteran prison official who took over as director of corrections last month.

Gomez said he plans to look into ways to provide more intensive services to parolees in the community rather than sending them back to prison when they commit repeated violations such as flunking drug tests.

“We tend to find that these people who are violating (parole) don’t have just one problem,” Gomez said. “It’s housing, employment, family, drugs. . . .”

Wilson, who appointed Gomez, is also concerned about the parolee return rate. About 50% of those released on parole return to prison as parole violators. In addition, Wilson hopes to address some of the problems that lead to crime by establishing a $200-million program that includes projects to prevent youngsters from dropping out of school and using drugs.

But beyond that, Wilson is not championing prison reforms or a broad reduction of sentences. Far from it.

“He wants to even toughen the laws (and) put even more people behind bars,” said Bill Livingstone, the governor’s press secretary.

Wilson believes that by getting even tougher, criminals will eventually be deterred from committing crimes.

“In the short run, you’ll probably have more prisoners,” Livingstone said, “but in the long run, there will probably be a downturn in the number of people incarcerated.”

Behind Bars

California’s state prison population hit 100,000 last month-in a 21-penitentiary system designed to house 54,000. Here is a look at the spiraling growth in inmate population compared with prison capacity over the past decade.

1980 Design Capacity: 23,534 Population: 24,569 1981 Design Capacity: 23,800 Population: 29,202 1982 Design Capacity: 24,611 Population: 34,640 1983 Design Capacity: 25,703 Population: 39,373 1984 Design Capacity: 26,792 Population: 43,328 1985 Design Capacity: 29,042 Population: 50,111 1986 Design Capacity: 32,097 Population: 59,484 1987 Design Capacity: 36,916 Population: 66,975 1988 Design Capacity: 44,675 Population: 76,171 1989 Design Capacity: 47,120 Population: 87,297 1990 Design Capacity: 51,013 Population: 97,309 1991 Design Capacity: 54,000 Population: 100,291 (as of April ‘91)

Categories of Offenses*

Here is a breakdown of the inmates admitted for new convictions in 1989: Drug: 37.9% Property: 29.5% Violent: 25.4% Other: 7.2% * excluding parolees who violated parole or committed new crimes Source: Dept. of Corrections