Prison bill is a good first step in the right direction

Any legislature is imperfect because it represents an imperfect world. The California Legislature’s passage of a prison expansion bill last week illustrates this reality perfectly.

Start with the imperfect world: For at least two decades, voters have been demanding that the bad guys be locked up for a very long time. But they haven’t wanted to pay for it. And their views have been well represented in the Capitol.

The last governor to really put the state’s money where his mouth was on crime and punishment was Republican George Deukmejian (1983-91). He built eight new prisons and significantly added on to seven other lockups. Under him, the number of inmates nearly tripled, from about 35,000 to 97,000.

But today, we’ve got 171,000 inmates -- the figure bounces around -- in prisons built for 100,000. They’re stacked like cordwood in some pens. That may be what many voters want, but it’s unacceptable to two federal judges, who have threatened to impose prison population caps in June.

Now, consider the Capitol’s imperfect solution -- roundly jeered from both the left and right -- and look at the final vote in the Senate.

Any time you have conservative Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) and liberal Sen. Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) lined up on the same side opposing a bill that requires a two-thirds majority vote for passage, a lot of give-and-take is going to be needed to attract enough support from the middle. That’s particularly true in Sacramento, where there isn’t much of a broad middle because of gerrymandered redistricting.

The prison expansion bill sailed through the Assembly in a breeze, 69 to 0. But in the Senate, it barely survived without a vote to spare, 27 to 10. The “no” and “abstain” votes came primarily from lefties and righties and were almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.

So, with the need to dicker, this was never going to be a perfect bill in anyone’s mind.

There has been much criticism from the left: There’s no reform of parole, which is too strict. There’s no commission to take a fresh look at whether some sentencing is too harsh. There’s no effort to move nonviolent female inmates from prisons to reentry facilities near their homes.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger originally had proposed all those things, along with building 78,000 new beds in state prisons and local jails at a cost of $10.9 billion.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats were keen on the expense. Republicans wouldn’t buy into the parole, sentencing and female relocation ideas. Democrats objected to all those new beds without major “reforms.”

So they compromised: 53,000 new beds, costing $7.4 billion. But Democrats insisted the expansion be in two phases. Before the final 21,000 beds can be built, the state must prove that it’s significantly improving rehabilitation. That includes more drug counseling, education courses, job training and mental health services.

Republicans and Schwarzenegger insisted on no early release of prisoners. And they wanted inmates to be shipped out of state to private lockups against their will. Democrats agreed to shift 8,000.

Those other things -- parole, sentencing, females -- could be considered in later legislation. The idea now was to get something passed to appease the federal judges.

“You think you’re writing big checks now?” Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland) told lawmakers. “Wait until you write one at the direction of the federal government. You say you’re not going to do it, and they say, ‘Oh yeah?’ ”

None of the Democratic opponents spoke during the floor debate, presumably out of deference to Perata, who negotiated the deal.

But afterward, Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), a longtime prison reformer, called the bill “a Hollywood prop the governor can use in federal court.” She added: “They call this a compromise. I think it’s a capitulation.”

Conservatives objected mainly to the costs, even at the reduced price. McClintock rose on the floor to decry the Schwarzenegger administration’s “mountain of debt, ocean of waste” and complained “there’s absolutely nothing in this measure to contain costs.”

When the initial vote fell short, Schwarzenegger sent GOP senators a letter promising to try to get the work done more cheaply. That coaxed four Republicans onto the “yes” side and secured passage.

There were a couple of political dynamics at work.

In the Assembly, every lawmaker seemed to be preening for the public -- on their best behavior, getting things done, showing they deserve more flexible term limits. A proposal destined for the February ballot would reduce their total allotted years from 14 to 12 but allow all the time to be spent in one house.

Hey, whatever works. As I’ve written before, when politicians act in their own self-interest, it often serves the public’s interests.

“The days of gotcha politics are over,” Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) declared to reporters after the Assembly vote. He soon was joined at the news conference by Schwarzenegger in a rare gubernatorial visit to a speaker’s office. The Republican governor praised the Democrat-controlled Legislature, asserting it was “working for the people rather than an ideology.”

In the Senate, there was a different dynamic. There, the lawmakers generally are more experienced, possess more legislative savvy and have a greater sense of independence. They know how to oppose a bill without embarrassing their leaders by killing it.

Perata actually spoke for the opponents, questioning whether Schwarzenegger really can fix the troubled prison system with the bill: “I must say this tests any article of faith that I’ve ever been associated with. I do not, as I stand here, believe that this job can get done.”

But without the legislation, he said, “it can only get worse.”

The governor and legislators deserve credit for passing what was possible. It’s a start.

The bill isn’t perfect, but it’s perfectly fine. Hopefully, the federal judges will concur.

George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.