PERSPECTIVE ON CRIME : Open Schools at Night for Safe Fun : Get kids off the streets and into community-staffed programs. It will be cheaper than building more prisons.

How many prisons must California build before we learn there’s a better place, right inside our communities, to reduce violence and gang activity? Open up schools at night. Light up the gyms, the computer labs, the study halls. Invite young people off the mean streets into a safe haven. Bring adults in as coaches, study advisers, someone to talk to. Build community around the schools by opening the schools to the community.

Safe, productive after-school programs are a sensible crime-prevention program. And far less costly than prisons. The state will spend an estimated $2 billion incarcerating “three strikes” offenders. But many youths never get to swing a bat on a real baseball diamond. Street corners are their field of dreams--and nightmares. With no team to join, they form a gang. With no coach, they look up to the neighborhood drug dealer. Instead of developing life skills, they advance in violent crime. Without a role in the community, they become its predators.

Schools are the only public asset in many neighborhoods. But after 3:30 p.m., these valuable classrooms, gyms, labs and playgrounds sit empty. The playing, the learning, the experimenting moves to the streets, the alleys, the latchkey homes.

Two legislative proposals, one state and the other federal, offer some relief.

In California, State Sen. Lucy Killea (I-San Diego) and Assemblywoman Dede Alpert (D-Coronado) have proposed legislation that would enable school districts to keep schools open until 8 p.m. on weekdays, 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

“We would provide kids with the kitchen table many of us had when we were growing up,” says Harry Weinberg, San Diego County Superintendent of Schools, who conceived the initiative. Each school district would design its own program. Participation would be voluntary. The state would provide supplemental funds. The budget analysis isn’t complete, but costs could be kept low by involving volunteers, community agencies, clubs and parents.

Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) has included in the pending crime bill a national “community schools initiative” to open schools to community groups. The Senate bill also authorizes $400 million for after-school programs--a tantalizing funding source for California.

Although state and federal initiatives are crucial, these programs can be started on a shoestring budget. A few years ago, Emory School in South San Diego Bay managed to offer Spanish, music, dance, drama, science, jump-rope competition and rocketeers for $15,000 per school year. But, as is often the case, the state-lottery funding vanished and Emory had to drop the program.

In recent years, many extracurricular programs were jettisoned in the rush to get “back to basics.” Band, theater and recreation programs were cut because they didn’t teach the three Rs. But group activities do teach three Rs--respect, responsibility and relationships.

Kids without jobs, chores or parents to monitor homework are deprived of attention but rich in leisure--tycoons of time, with only chump change in their pockets. Without attachments to family and community, they are prey to destructive influences. Drugs, alcohol, vandalism, rape, drive-by shootings all become leisure-time activities.

Can after-school programs really make a difference? So many schools are already embattled by their own crime and budget problems. Overwhelmed administrators understandably ask: Won’t adding after-school activities be the straw that breaks the camel’s back?

It doesn’t have to, if enough people are willing to come forward and lend a hand. We can’t afford not to try. We face a crisis that goes beyond education and strikes at the heart of our communities. If we do not use resources of our neighborhoods to raise children, if we do not spend time--not just money--to tutor, coach and counsel them, then we all will be prisoners in our homes.

The breakdown in public safety has shaken our confidence in social institutions that, many believe, have failed to provide either justice or security. So we put our faith in penal institutions. A decade ago, California spent twice as much on the state universities as on prisons; now, after building 19 prisons but only one university campus, funding is equal. Do we really consider jailers a better investment than teachers?

The playground after school is a good place to learn in safety what too many of our children are trying to learn the hard way on the streets: to stand up to bullies; to avoid drugs; to feel strong enough to stop running and face up to problems.

Open up the schools tonight, and maybe we won’t need so many prisons tomorrow.