Wilson Unveils Anti-Crime Package : Legislation: Governor proposes bills that would impose tougher sentences for carjackings and limit the time inmates can take off their terms.

Gov. Pete Wilson proposed a sweeping package of criminal justice legislation Thursday that would treat carjacking as a separate crime, stiffen sentences for a variety of offenses and place new limits on the amount of time inmates can shave from their terms while in prison.

Many of the ideas the Republican governor included in his package were passed by the Legislature last year but died because their fate was linked by lawmakers to a measure that Wilson vetoed. Wilson said he will lead a new push to enact the bills this year.

“We will not tolerate criminal behavior in this state,” Wilson said in a speech to the San Diego Crime Commission.

Wilson also said he will reject any suggestions by legislators to pare state spending on prisons, which for a decade has been the fastest growing part of the budget and, at $3 billion a year, costs more than the University of California system.

“In this time of tight budgets, we’ll be forced to cut many worthy programs, but one thing we will not do--we will not indulge in the false and foolhardy economy of releasing dangerous criminals,” he said.

The package Wilson described included about 10 proposals and was highlighted by two measures he said would combat a pair of crimes that are increasingly troubling urban residents throughout the state--carjacking and drive-by shootings.

Carjacking is now treated as an armed robbery with an average prison term of seven years, Wilson said. His bill would make it a crime of its own with prison sentences as long as 20 years.

Wilson said he wants to make those convicted of fatal drive-by shootings eligible for the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole. Now, 30 years to life is the stiffest sentence that these criminals can receive, he said.

The governor’s package also includes two bills aimed at protecting women from violent crime.

One measure would make certain rapists subject to terms of 18 years to life in prison. The current maximum for aggravated rape is nine years, and Wilson said the average time served is four years.

“Rape victims suffer for life,” Wilson said. “The unspeakable perpetrators of this violent act should do life as well.”

Wilson’s package also would target domestic violence by prohibiting plea bargaining in cases involving serious injury, providing a prison sentence of up to nine years and creating a 60-day jail term for violating a restraining order in a way that results in “victim trauma.”

In addition, Wilson wants to increase the penalty for violating a domestic violence court order from $1,000 to $2,000 and create a pilot project requiring arrest of any person who officers have “reasonable cause” to believe committed domestic violence, even if the police did not witness the crime and the victim was unwilling to press charges.

Finally, the governor said he will resubmit to the Legislature a proposal to limit the ability of prisoners to reduce their sentences by working while incarcerated. Now, inmates can trim one day from their sentence for each day they work or attend school, allowing them to cut their terms in half. Wilson’s proposal would allow inmates to cut only 15% from their sentences.

“The fact that a convicted rapist, a major drug dealer or an armed robber behaves well behind bars and is a model prisoner doesn’t make him a safe bet to return to society,” Wilson said.

That proposal and others made by Wilson were criticized by the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, an association of criminal defense lawyers.

Elisabeth Semel, a past president of the group, said the governor’s proposal to take away credit for inmates who behave well is the “ultimate in hype” and would do nothing to make the state’s streets safer. The nonpartisan legislative analyst in 1991 said a similar bill would eventually boost prison costs by $1.5 billion a year because every inmate would be serving more time behind bars.

“He’s basically saying that whatever incentive people who are incarcerated have to work, to be trained, to behave, let’s take that away from them,” Semel said. “We have almost no rehabilitation programs in California, and now the few we have, he wants to take them away.”

Semel said Wilson’s other proposals are similar to those pushed by his predecessor, former Gov. George Deukmejian, which led to a doubling of the state’s prison population but, she said, have not made people any safer on the streets or in their homes.

Even so, Democratic Assemblyman Bob Epple of Norwalk, the new chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, said he expects many of Wilson’s proposals to be enacted this year.

He noted that a number of Democrat-backed bills on domestic violence and drug crimes died last year because they were linked by a parliamentary maneuver to a measure Wilson vetoed that would have given judges more options in sentencing criminals.