INMATE POPULATION EXPECTED TO DROP

PROP. 36: State Law Expected To Send 5,000 To Drug Treatment Instead Of
Prison In First Year

SACRAMENTO -- California's prison population will drop by more than
5,000 inmates in the first year after voters opted to send drug
offenders to treatment instead of prison, according to new
projections.

The nation's largest prison population -- 160,655 inmates at the end
of 2000 -- will keep shrinking until 2004. Then, tough-on-crime laws
are projected to increase the population again, although much more
slowly than prison officials had projected before now.

By 2006, the population is expected to be nearly 18,000 inmates fewer
than the California Department of Corrections had predicted before
voters approved Proposition 36 in November.

Despite the drop, prison officials say they need to keep building
maximum-security prisons to house hard-core offenders.

"We continue to have a serious shortage of maximum-security beds in
state prisons," said Steve Green, assistant secretary of the Youth
and Adult Correctional Agency. "We don't see that abating any time
soon."

Proposition 36, which takes effect July 1, requires that people
convicted of using or possessing drugs for the first or second time be
sent to community treatment programs instead of prison or jail.

After the first year, the department predicts, the prison population
will be 9,216 fewer than the number estimated in October. Of that, the
voter initiative is projected to be responsible for 5,388 fewer inmates.

"To me it sounds like the estimates might be a little aggressive,"
said K. Jack Riley, director of Rand Corp.'s community justice
department. "I think we'll see uneven implementation of it across the
state."

Green predicted the proposition eventually will result in longer terms
for hard-core drug offenders.

"In the long run, we think our population will go up as persons who
escape prison the first time around come into the system as they
commit more serious crimes," Green said.

The prison population dropped last year for the first time in 22
years. Prison officials credited a lower crime rate and a drop in
parole violations.

According to the report, the number of inmates dropped by 1,345 in the
last half of the year, for a net decline for 2000 of 32 inmates. That
compares with an increase of 1,124 in 1999 and 4,287 in 1998.

The decline compares with an average 14.5 percent population growth
during the 1980s and average 6.3 percent increases during the 1990s.