Politicians Pledge Parole System Reform : Justice: Even adversaries such as Pete Wilson and Kathleen Brown say the current system allows many repeat criminals to escape prosecution for their latest crimes.

Several politicians renewed their support Monday for measures that would increase administrative penalties for parole violators arrested for new crimes.

Partly because of cost considerations, the Legislature defeated several bills earlier this year that would have increased the maximum one-year penalty that parole authorities can now impose on parolees who are arrested but not prosecuted for new crimes.

Gov. Pete Wilson and candidate Kathleen Brown favor legislation that would subject violators to up to five years in prison, according to their aides.

The Times reported Monday that scores of prison parolees recently arrested for felonies in Los Angeles County have slipped through a little noticed loophole in the “three strikes” law and avoided stiff new penalties prescribed by the measure.

The loophole allows a parolee’s new arrest--no matter how brutal or serious the offense--to be processed administratively as a parole violation outside the reach of the get-tough crime law signed by the governor in March.

The maximum penalty parole officials can now impose is one year in prison, compared to a life prison term that the courts can hand down in “three strikes” cases.

Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove), running for attorney general, and two other assemblymen as well as a state senator all introduced measures this year to provide harsher punishment.

Bills introduced by state Sen. Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco) and Assemblyman Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) would have enabled parole authorities to impose prison terms of five years or more on parole violators. The bills died in the Assembly Ways and Means committee.

“We held the bills because analysts found that they would cost billions of dollars,” said Geoff Long, a committee consultant.

Kopp said he introduced his measure after the state’s Little Hoover Commission recommended that parole authorities be empowered to hand down prison terms of more than one year.

The commission concluded in January that parole violators had reached “epidemic proportions.” The report criticized prosecutors for diverting so many parolees away from the courts to be disciplined instead by parole authorities.

In 1993, about 20,000 parolees were returned to prison with new prison terms imposed by the courts. An additional 35,000 were returned to custody by parole officials.

Gov. Wilson backed a bill sponsored earlier this year by Assemblyman Richard Rainey (R-Contra Costa) that would have empowered parole authorities to return parole violators to prison for up to five years, or alternatively, for the same length term as their most recent court conviction.

“The bottom line here is that the parole laws are ridiculously and dangerously lenient,” said the governor’s spokesman, Sean Walsh. “There are parolees who get out of prison early, commit new serious crimes, and then go back to prison for just one year.”

Brown, too, favors legislation “to tighten up on parolees and return violators to prison for five years or the balance of their previous sentence,” said her campaign spokeswoman, Beth Miller. “It’s absurd that the maximum penalty right now is one year.”

Greg Tottin, executive director of the California Assn. of District Attorneys, said prosecutors refer arrested parolees to parole authorities for administrative action only when the case “does not meet their criteria for filing,” he said.