Filling Holes in the Justice System

California’s county public safety programs, already overburdened, may be crushed under the new burdens imposed by Proposition 21, the punitive juvenile crime measure that voters passed earlier this year. Nowhere in the nation are the problems more pronounced than in Los Angeles County, whose overcrowded juvenile hall facilities have been cited for violations of basic state health and safety standards.

Unless lawmakers and Gov. Gray Davis start to pay attention, county juvenile justice facilities will face huge new responsibilities with no way to pay for them. For instance, the measure will increase the average amount of time that serious juvenile offenders stay in juvenile halls from four months to 10 months.

Other parts of the justice system are also dangerously near collapse, including L.A. County’s probation system for adult offenders. Its probation officers have the highest caseloads in the nation--1 to 1,000.

Last week, the state Senate earmarked increases for three important public safety programs, but unless the Assembly and Davis agree to support these increases before the state budget revision May 15 the programs could languish, as they have in previous years.

The Legislature should:

* Fund a one-time $250-million grant to bring county juvenile halls up to minimum federal safety standards. Sen. Dede Alpert (D-Coronado), unable to get Davis’ support for allocating $500 million a year to help counties improve their juvenile detention facilities, may amend her bill, SB 1930, to provide a single, $250-million grant to counties. That’s not enough money to rebuild or expand the many county juvenile detention facilities in California that are old, dilapidated and overcrowded. But the money, about $100 million of which could go to L.A. County, would renovate facilities enough to meet federal safety standards.

* Pass SB 2062 by Sen. Don Perata (D-Alameda). The bill would provide grants to counties that assess and treat mentally ill juvenile offenders within 48 hours of their detention. Legislators should also consider expanding a pilot program by Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) in which three counties tracked and treated seriously mentally ill homeless adults who had been in and out of county jails and hospitals because of drug abuse or threatening behavior. A study released this week showed that the programs reduced hospitalizations by 64.2% and jail days by 81%.

* Provide $18 million to keep better track of parolees who are most likely to endanger public safety. In Los Angeles County alone, there are 29,000 ex-prisoners--10,000 of them juveniles--who agreed, as a condition of their parole, to be subject to warrantless searches for weapons possession. However, the county’s chief probation officer, Richard Shumsky, admits that the county only conducts a handful of such searches each year because of inadequate staffing. The parolee tracking bill, AB 2437 by Assemblyman George Runner (R-Los Angeles), is based on successful programs in Boston, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Richmond, Va., that have kept guns out of the hands of the riskiest parolees.

These are three specific measures that meet well-defined public safety needs. There’s no excuse not to make them law.

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To Take Action: Write Gov. Gray Davis, State Capitol, Sacramento 95814. Phone (916) 445-2841. E-mail governor@gov.ca.gov.