State Prison Rolls Drop 2 Straight Months

California’s prison population has registered a surprise year-end decline of 1,446 inmates, the first such drop since November 1992.

The latest count, taken Dec. 12, shows 160,935 inmates in California’s state prisons, down for two consecutive months from the year’s high of 162,381 in September. For 1999, the state’s prison population, still the largest in the nation, will show the smallest annual increase in 20 years.

Experts inside and outside the state Department of Corrections attribute the dip to reduced crime brought about by an improved economy. Diversion programs are keeping some felons out of prison, and tougher sentencing laws such as three strikes may be deterring people from breaking laws, some experts say.

“The economy is looking good,” said Peter Greenwood, a criminal justice expert at Rand Corp. in Santa Monica. “People say it’s the best of times. Cops are getting smarter.”

Earlier this year, the department predicted that there would be 167,294 inmates by next year. Corrections officials later scaled that back to 165,090. Officials are revising projections again, taking into account the recent decline.

Prison population projections are important as a barometer of crime and sentencing practices. The Department of Corrections uses the figures to justify pleas for more tax money to build new facilities. California already has the nation’s largest such system, with 33 prisons, most of which were built in the past decade.

Corrections officials say the autumn dip is too small and too recent to represent a trend.

“It’s kind of a short period of time to make a very firm statement that there is an overall decline,” department spokeswoman Jeanie Esajian said.

However, the agency cited a “change in projected and actual inmate populations” last week when it canceled plans to contract with private prison firms to build and operate four 500-bed facilities for less violent inmates.

State Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), a proponent of less costly private prisons, said that if the Gov. Gray Davis administration is intent on scrapping the private facilities, it should also drop plans for a new $335-million maximum security lockup in Delano. Lawmakers approved the 4,000-bed state facility in this year’s budget.

“It raises the question ‘Why are we moving ahead?’ ” Polanco said. “We ought not to be publicly financing prisons ever again, not when there are private companies willing to do it.”

State corrections statistics show that even as officials were seeking approval of the Delano project, California judges were sending fewer felons to prison. In the past two years, the number of people receiving new prison sentences has fallen by about 1,800, to 45,000 new prisoners a year.

Sentences are, however, getting longer: The average term is about four years now, up from 3 1/2 years in the early 1990s before tougher sentencing laws took effect.

Esajian said another reason for the nearly flat prison population--it was 159,563 at the end of 1998--is that the number of inmates incarcerated for parole violations has shown almost no increase. The department had assumed that there would be more parole violators returning to prison.

But Esajian said the agency hired more parole officers this year and began a new program that offers more service to parolees, including expense money to help them find work.

“The parole officers keep close tabs on parolees, and when they are tagged [for violations], it is for smaller offenses,” Esajian said. Although modest, the prison population decline comes five years after the Legislature approved and voters ratified the nation’s harshest sentencing law. Three strikes generally doubles sentences for second-time felons and imposes terms of 25 years to life on three-time felons.

In 1994, as lawmakers debated the measure, corrections officials predicted that the proposal and other anti-crime measures would push California’s prison population to 230,000 inmates by the turn of the century--requiring, they said at the time, 20 additional facilities.

By 1996, prison officials had scaled back that estimate, predicting that there would be 181,000 inmates by 2000.

As it turns out, the actual number may not reach 161,000 as 2000 begins. The system’s capacity is 177,000 inmates, the department says.

Still, the number of state inmates has nearly doubled since 1988, when there were 76,000 prisoners. To house the influx, officials have been forced to convert prison gymnasiums into dormitories, with inmates sleeping in triple bunks.

“If, in fact, the prison population has topped out, it is a very good sign,” said attorney Steve Fama of the Prison Law Office, which has sued the prison system over conditions. “We incarcerate too many people for too long, and the Department of Corrections isn’t capable of providing basic services to the population it has.”

Prison officials say the state’s 33 penitentiaries remain inadequate to house the current population, particularly those inmates who should be in high-security facilities, such as the one planned at Delano.

“Our population has not changed at the higher level,” prison spokeswoman Esajian said.