PRISON CHIEF SAYS STATE'S FACILITIES AT BREAKING POINT

Overcrowding: He predicts that space will be used up by 2001,and suggests
alternatives to imprisonment.

Tract-Hundreds of prisoners cover the floor of the old gym like fans
rushing the court after a big game. Sullen young men, they mill
endlessly in the dimly lit, narrow aisles between rows of bunk beds
stacked two and three high.

They sleep almost head-to-toe, sit elbow-to-elbow to use the toilets,
and wait in lines for phones and water. They swelter in summer with no
air conditioning, get chills, and pass colds in winter. Always, they
fight the rats and spiders.

A guard shielded by razor wire watches from an overhead walk-way. She
carries a rifle to halt fights among the car thieves, drug dealers,
burglars and gang members, a racially tense checkerboard of brown,
black and white men that swells to more than 600 at the evening count.

"It's scary," said Lt. Cindy Lincoln, a veteran prison guard, gazing
at what seems a vision of hell. But it's the future of prisons in
California, which is losing the race to find space for inmates.

Even with the use of temporary housing, such as the converted gym at a
state prison near Tracy, 60 miles east of San Francisco, the state
expects to run out of room for more inmates in two years.

"April 2001," Robert Presley, Gov. Gray Davis' new Cabinet secretary
for prisons, said in an interview. "By then, we will have exhausted
every cranny and nook."

Although a slowing crime rate has eased inmate growth projections, the
former Democratic state senator from Riverside has warned lawmakers
that the system now holding 160,000 inmates "is approaching critical
mass."

"This is a time to take a critical look at all facets of the
correctional system. This is a good time to consider
alternatives."

Any new alternatives to incarceration could have a better chance with
Democrats controlling both the legislative and executive branches.

For advocates of social change, it's an opportunity.

"Prison should not be the catchall solution to all of the social
problems that we have - to mental illness, to homelessness, to lack of
health care, to the lack of education," says Angela Davis, a former
'60s militant turned author, professor and prison reformer.

Taking advice from the Little Hoover Commission, Presley already says
he will try to reduce recidivism among the 110,000 supervised parolees
by expanding drug-treatment programs and boosting educational
opportunities for inmates.

The watchdog commission also recommended diverting low-level and
nonviolent inmates to nonprison programs.

But talk of social reform isn't new. And neither are overcrowded
prisons. California has been adopting stricter sentencing laws for
almost two decades, culminating in the 1994 "three strikes, you're
out" law.

California spent more than $5 billion in an unprecedented attempt to
build its way out of over-crowding in the 1980s and early 1990s. As
the inmate population increased sixfold, the system to house them
almost tripled, from 12 to 33 prisons.

Voters approved about half of the money. The rest was covered by
lease-purchase bonds not requiring voter approval. But voters stopped
approving prison bonds in 1990, and Republican Gov. Pete Wilson
deadlocked with Democratic leaders over expensive new

construction.

Now the burden falls on Davis, who's still forming his policies, and the
Democrat-controlled Legislature: Build more prisons or possibly be forced
in a few years by courts to release felons.

"Fortunately, we have yet to have that happen at the state level in
California," Presley said. "We were always able to demonstrate that we
were trying to solve the problems ... by building."

After meeting with Presley, Assemblyman Bill Leonard, a Rancho
Cucamonga Republican, introduced a $4billion prison-construction bond
measure that would go before California voters in March 2000.

"I'm very concerned ... we will have court orders when we reach full
capacity that would entail release of violent felons," Leaonard said
in an interview.

Complaints about overcrowding are legion among inmates. In the
converted gym at Deuel Vocational Institute, Rafael Harper, a
38-year-old drug offender built like a heavyweight boxer, emerged from
the crowd to read a list of particulars: "It's unconstitutional. It's
very crowded. You can't hardly move around. In the bathrooms, your
buttocks are bumping each other."

Ronald Viera, a 23-year-old auto thief sitting atop a three-tier bunk,
said, "I worry about falling off in the middle of the night. It's kind
of high."

Construction to relieve crowding, even if approved, would take three
to four years and must be combined with social reforms to reduce the
number of inmates, the Legislature's analysts warn.

The state has contracted for private space to hold some inmates in the
short term, but Presley, who was chairman of the legislative prisons
committee during the '80s buildup, said government can do the job better.

In the meantime, prison officials are using every space they can find
for inmates, creating a volatile atmosphere in a system already
plagued by violence.

At the Tracy state prison, "temporary" conversion of the dingy,
half-century-old gym to house all but the most dangerous inmates has
lasted more than a decade. TV monitors haven't prevented fistfights
among the inmates, many of whom have tattoos and shaved heads.

"When it's crowded like this, the potential for anything to happen is
that much worse," Glenn Schmidt, a muscled 37-year-old burglar in a
tank top, said over the din.

Added Rene Gallegos, 24, a slight drug offender wearing prison blues,
"We're human beings. We can't be living like savages. That's what it's
coming to."