Drop in Prison Admissions Startles Officials

After years of explosive growth, the number of convicts being admitted to California’s bulging penitentiaries has gone into a sudden and unexpected decline.

The downturn, driven by a drastic reduction in the number of drug offenders being sent to prison, is causing surprised corrections officials to take another look at California’s multibillion-dollar master plan for prison construction.

The $8-billion plan--the most ambitious in the nation--is based on forecasts that the inmate population would top 163,000 by 1996. But those predictions have been scaled down in light of the unexpected decline in new inmates this year compared to last.

The decline’s effect on the cost of building and running the state prisons has not been calculated. But James H. Gomez, director of state corrections, said if the slowdown continues, “it’s a need for less money and a need for less institutions in the future.”

Because of a number of factors, including long prison terms and parole violators returning to custody, the overall prison population is not shrinking. But the system’s annual growth rate has slowed considerably.

The reason for the sharp drop in drug arrests in California is not absolutely clear. There is speculation that educational programs are finally paying off in reduced narcotics use. But law enforcement officers and penologists attribute most of the decline to a shift in police priorities away from mass arrests of street dealers.

Whatever the reasons, the California experience appears to mirror a national trend that has implications for prison and jail planners across the country.

“We’re projecting that this is a long-term trend,” said James Austin, executive vice president of the nonprofit National Council on Crime and Delinquency, which studies trends in crime and incarceration. “And we’re revising estimates of how fast jail and prison populations are going to grow.”

State corrections director Gomez cautioned that it is too early to tell whether a trend has been established. Even if the old rate of inmate population growth is cut in half, he said, the number of convicts locked in the state prison system would continue to increase by more than 5,000 a year.

Gomez also noted that considerable building is needed to reduce current crowding in the prison system, in which more than 100,000 inmates are housed in space designed for 54,342. Factors such as new, tougher sentencing legislation could drive the prison growth rate back up, officials warn.

Since the prison population explosion began in 1981, the state Legislature has authorized $4 billion for construction of penitentiary space to house 48,000 inmates. So far, 11 prisons, four major additions to penitentiaries and several conservation camps have been built for 29,000 inmates.

Corrections planners have predicted that another $4.1 billion will be needed to lock up an additional 48,000 inmates after the rest of the authorized money is used.

But last year, the number of drug-related arrests in California suddenly plummeted after skyrocketing for a decade. Prison officials believe the 1990 decline in these arrests led to an 18% reduction in the number of male narcotics offenders sent to prison this year. Males make up more than 90% of the prison population.

The decline in drug-related admissions reverses a longtime trend of locking up more and more narcotics offenders. The number of male drug offenders admitted to the prison system nearly quadrupled between 1985, when 3,238 such convicts were incarcerated, and 1990, when 12,051 were imprisoned.

“This is the first time we’ve seen new admissions drop for drugs in at least the last 10 years,” said Richard S. Welch, chief of Offender Information Services for the state Department of Corrections.

“It’s certainly going to mean a smaller growth throughout the projection period (1991-96),” Welch said. “We know that the (overall prison) population will continue to grow, but it will grow slower than we projected. . . .”

Welch presented new prison population projections to top corrections administrators Friday, but would not reveal details other than to say the figures predict a substantially smaller increase in the growth rate. Corrections administrators, who will use the data for current and long-term plans, say that the information will be made public later this year.

The reduction in drug-offender admissions is highly significant for prison planners because these inmates make up a large percentage of the new prisoners incarcerated each year. Drug offenders accounted for 35% of the inmates admitted to the state prisons in 1990.

The number of new state prison inmates who committed violent crimes or property offenses continued to rise this year. But that growth was offset by the decline in admissions for drug violators. The overall admission rate declined by 0.5% between January and June compared to a similar period last year. During each of the previous five years, the overall prison admission rate increased by at least 11% and has gone as high as 16% a year.

The prison population topped 100,000 April 14 and planners had predicted that it would be well over 104,000 by Aug. 18. But on that date, the number of inmates in the system was still under 102,000.

During the first seven months of 1990 the prison population grew at an average rate of 977 inmates per month. During a similar period this year, the increase averaged 677 per month--a decrease in the monthly growth rate of 300 inmates. Moreover, between June 23 and Aug. 18 of this year, the prison population actually declined by 109 inmates.

Welch acknowledges a nagging fear that the current decline in admissions simply may be a fluke--a temporary lull in the prison population explosion that began more than 10 years ago. There was, after all, a dip in the prison admissions rate in 1984, but the upward spiral continued the following year.

“It could be (a temporary decline) and it scares the hell out of me,” Welch said. “They make construction plans based on this data. To some extent they hire custody people based on this.”

But there are indications that the decline in drug-offender admissions is no fluke.

Arrests of narcotics offenders in California have plunged after climbing steeply for the last 10 years. During the last decade, such arrests had nearly tripled, rising from 57,682 in 1980 to 163,742 in 1989. Then, last year, the number of arrests suddenly dropped to 137,393--a decline of 16%.

There appears to be a similar if somewhat less dramatic pattern on the national level.

Federal Drug Enforcement Administration figures show a 10% decline in drug arrests last year after at least five years of steady growth. Such arrests climbed from 15,304 in 1985 to 25,341 in 1989. Then, in 1990, arrests dropped to 22,761.

Moreover, California Department of Justice preliminary figures for the first six months of this year indicate a continuing decline in drug arrests in a sampling of large law enforcement jurisdictions around the state. Some of the reductions have been dramatic compared to a similar time period in 1990.

The Los Angeles Police Department, for example, reported that 13,461 adults were arrested for drug felonies during the first six months of 1990, while only 7,278 such arrests were made during a similar period this year--a 46% decline.

Still, no one is claiming a victory in the war on drugs. The declining number of drug arrests reflect, for the most part, changes in police policy, experts say. Big money drug lords are becoming the targets of choice for narcotics officers rather than the more numerous street dealers. And, with limited budgets, police are being forced to choose between deploying officers on huge drug raids or using them to improve response times to citizens’ calls for assistance.

The LAPD, for example, can no longer afford the overtime pay for massive drug sweeps.

“Most of it has to do with a shift of priorities for the department as a whole,” said Deputy Police Chief William Booth. “We have pretty much quit deploying the large ‘Hammer Task Force,’ (which required) a massive use of resources that was effective at the time.” Such methods were, in a sense, too effective for the criminal justice system to cope with, according to Austin of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

“The system has hit a saturation level as to how many criminals it can arrest, process and convict,” Austin said. “The system reached a ceiling. It just can’t physically process any more people.”

A Reversal of Numbers ADULT DRUG ARRESTS

Here is a look at the number of adults arrested for drug violations in California from 1980 to 1990. After steadily climbing through the 1980s, arrests plummeted last year. Prison officials believe the decline in such arrests is the cause of an unexpected reduction in the state prison admission rate this year. 1980: 57,682 1981: 60,765 1982: 62,456 1983: 73,318 1984: 85,696 1985: 99,752 1986: 120,365 1987: 135,283 1988: 158,510 1989: 163,742 1990: 137,393 PRISON ADMISSIONS

Here is a look at the percentage change in new admissions for various categories of offenses by male felons, comparing the first half of 1990 with the first half of 1991.

Total prison admissions for all categories of offenders increased except for drug violators, whose lockup rate dropped by 18% statewide.

COUNTY VIOLENT PROPERTY DRUGS OTHER Los Angeles +10.6% +4.5% -23.9% +23.9% Other Southland* +16.3% +10.2% -11.4% +12.4% Bay Area** +19.5% -3.6% -18.3% -6.3% All Other +0.7% +1.7% -12.6% +21.2% State Total +11.5% +4.6% -18.4% +15.1%

* Includes Imperial, Kern, Orange, Riverside, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo and Ventura ** Includes Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo Solano and Sonoma. SOURCE: California Department of Justice, California Department of Corrections.