Paroled Lawmaker to Push Prison Reform

For 16 years, Assemblyman Pat Nolan, a staunch conservative from Glendale, led Republican efforts to crack down on crime and lengthen prison sentences.

Today, in a turnabout, the onetime leader of the state Assembly’s Republicans plans to tell his former colleagues that drug abusers and other nonviolent prisoners may be spending too much time behind bars.

The difference between then and now: Nolan’s nearly two years in prison on political corruption charges.

As a result of that confinement, Nolan said, he now views the world through “whole new lenses.” In an interview Monday, he complained that the criminal justice system has failed to make communities safer and lamented that “our prisons are revolving doors.”

Nolan expects to hammer home that message in a legislative hearing on prison management today--his first such appearance since his release two years ago from a federal penitentiary.

Testifying will be the latest step in an unusual personal odyssey that reflects Nolan’s transformation from hard-edged Southern California anti-tax crusader to Bible-quoting prison reformer based in Virginia. In the Legislature, Nolan, a longtime Roman Catholic whose faith was rekindled in prison, was the consummate insider; today, he will be the outsider, trying to dissuade his onetime colleagues from views he once held himself.

“We should reserve prison space for people we are afraid of, not just that we are angry at,” said Nolan, who four years ago pleaded guilty to a single racketeering charge as part of a far-ranging federal sting operation against corruption in state politics.

The goal of prison, Nolan said, should not be to merely incarcerate criminals but instead to turn them into useful members of society and bring peace to their communities. Nonviolent prisoners could compensate their victims and continue to support their families, for example, if allowed to serve time at home under strict supervision--that would also save the state money, he said.

Nolan, 47, landed a job right out of prison as president of Justice Fellowship, a Virginia-based prison reform group associated with another onetime political figure, former White House aide Charles W. Colson of Watergate fame. Now, Nolan spends his time on the nationwide lecture circuit, sometimes visiting prisons.

Most recently, he publicly urged Texas officials to consider clemency for Carla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who experienced a conversion to Christianity while in prison. “A living monument to the change that can take place when someone gives their heart to God . . . is better than just another dead convict,” Nolan said. Tucker was executed.

A lawyer and a USC graduate, Nolan was first elected to the Assembly in 1978--one of a crop of so-called Proposition 13 babies who ran for office in support of the landmark property tax cutting initiative. Glib and ambitious, Nolan climbed the political ladder, becoming leader of the Assembly’s Republicans, and seemed poised for higher office.

But his rise paralleled an undercover FBI investigation of the Capitol that led to the conviction of 14 people, including five lawmakers. Four years ago, Nolan pleaded guilty to racketeering and received a 33-month sentence.

Nolan admitted to conducting his Assembly office as “racketeering enterprise” to extort campaign contributions from those who sought his support on legislation. On Monday, Nolan, his sandy hair now going gray, declined to discuss his case, saying, “I’m not here to change people’s opinions of me and what occurred.”

Nolan said he remains on probation for two more years.

Nolan, who lives in Virginia with his wife and three children, was interviewed at a local motel where his group is holding a conference. His navy polo shirt sported a name tag reading simply, “Pat.”

Sen. John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara) said Nolan volunteered to testify today before his Public Safety Committee. Though Vasconcellos had sharp policy differences with Nolan, he welcomed his old antagonist to the Capitol, saying, “We’re happy to have him back.”

Nolan said his prison experience gave him a valuable perspective to share with his former colleagues. Citing an incident he often recalled in prison, Nolan said that as a lawmaker he had brushed aside a proposal by former Sen. Ed Davis, a onetime Los Angeles police chief, to extend workers’ compensation to prison inmates.

“ ‘Ed,’ I said, ‘that’s the stupidest idea in the world. Why should the businesses in my district pay higher premiums to pay benefits to criminals?’ ”

An angry Davis, Nolan remembered, “looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘How can you call yourself a Christian and say that?’ ”

Nolan said that conversation often haunts him. “I didn’t think of inmates as humans,” he said, “as my brothers in Christ.”