LAW SEEN RESULTING IN FEWER INMATES

Proposition 36's Impact Forecast

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 programs 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 will
cause the population to grow again, although much more slowly than prison
officials had projected before.

By 2006, the population is projected to be nearly 18,000 smaller than the
state Department of Corrections had predicted six months ago, before voters
approved Proposition 36 in November.

Despite the drop, prison officials say they need to keep building
maximum-security prisons for hard-core offenders. And officials in
California's 58 counties could see their budgets stretched considerably as
they take on the burden of treating and supervising drug offenders.

Proposition 36, which takes effect July 1, requires that those 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 population will be 9,216
fewer than it had estimated in October. Of that, the voter initiative is
projected to be responsible for 5,388 fewer inmates.

The decrease due to Proposition 21 is expected to continue in successive
years, but Corrections spokesman Russ Heimerich warned that the department
is entering uncharted waters.

"Especially with Proposition 36, we just don't know what kind of effect
that's going to have," he said.

The projections depend in large part on guessing how many drug offenders
will qualify, and whether county prosecutors refuse to negotiate plea
bargains with drug dealers, knowing that a drug use or possession
conviction will bring no prison time.

"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."

Steve Green, assistant secretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional
Agency, predicted Proposition 36 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 (sentences) the first time around come into the system as they
commit more serious crimes," Green said.

Fewer drug offenders also won't mean a dramatic cut in prison costs, Green
said, because most drug offenders are housed in minimum-security
conservation camps and community correctional facilities.

An economic downturn also could drive up crime rates again, as is beginning
to happen in the latest urban crime reports, Green warned.

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.