PRISONERS OF THE MIND

JUST 12 hours after he was released from prison, convicted rapist
James Porter walked out of his Fresno motel room, entered the room of
a 62-year-old woman, grabbed her by the neck and raped her. Then he
went back to his room and called his parole officer.

Porter is back in custody after the Sept. 3 attack. If convicted under
the state's three-strikes law, he likely will be behind prison walls
for the rest of his life. Another violent predator will be out of
circulation.

State corrections officials had a feeling it would end up this way.
That's the tragic thing about the Porter case. Officials knew he was
mentally ill. They knew he was likely to commit another crime. They
tried to delay his release, to the point of bending the law. Now they
want to change the law to prevent other James Porters from being set
free.

``We need to put the key back in the lock,'' said Jim Nielsen,
chairman of the state Board of Prison Terms.

When people commit heinous crimes, we lock them up. The state's
three-strikes law -- and the one-strike law for particularly violent
sex offenders -- makes it possible to lock up many dangerous criminals
for 25 years to life. But inmates sentenced before these laws were
enacted come up for parole all the time. We can't keep them locked up
simply because we think they might commit crimes in the future. So we
need to find a way to balance the rights of inmates, particularly
those with mental illnesses, against the rights of the public to be
safe from dangerous predators.

This month, 134 mentally ill inmates are being released from prison by
order of the 1st District Court of Appeal. Porter was one of them. The
court ruled July 24 that prisoners who have served their sentences
can't be kept in prison simply because they might be a threat to
society. They either have to be proved in court to be dangerously
mentally ill and committed to a mental institution, or they have to be
paroled and then picked up if they violate conditions of their parole.

California's Sexually Violent Predators Law, passed in 1995, gave the
state the power to keep some dangerous prisoners in prison past their
parole dates. The law applies to those convicted of multiple sex
crimes who are diagnosed with specific mental disorders. If a jury
finds the inmate dangerous and in need of psychiatric treatment, the
inmate can be committed to a psychiatric facility. Every two years the
court must decide whether to continue the commitment.

But Porter didn't qualify as a sexually violent predator. Though he
had two rapes on his record, one didn't count because he was a
juvenile at the time.

Before the appeals court ruling, corrections officials were holding
prisoners like Porter by, in effect, revoking their parole before they
ever got out. If the prisoners were examined by psychiatrists and
deemed dangerous and in need of psychiatric treatment that was not
available in the community, they were kept in prison.

The court said that wasn't legal. Gov. Wilson responded by trying to
get legislation passed to expand the power of the Board of Prison
Terms. Some proposed language for a bill was circulated in August, but
it raised serious concerns about the rights of prisoners because it
allowed the board to hold them without jury trials. With the
Legislature about to recess, there was no time to address such a
complicated issue. The Legislature is expected to take it up when it
returns in December.

According to 1997 figures from the state's Legislative Analyst, about
9 percent of the inmates in California prisons are seriously mentally
ill. Yet most of them are housed with the rest of the prison
population and many receive no psychiatric treatment. Most mentally
ill inmates are not sex offenders. Most are not dangerous if they are
taking medication.

We need to lock up violent people. But it makes no sense to lock up
people who suffer from an illness without treating the illness. And it
seems unfair to send someone to prison, give him little or no
treatment for mental illness and then, just before he is to be
released, decide he needs treatment and must stay in prison.

What do we do about the James Porters of California?

First, we try to identify juvenile offenders and adults in county
jails who need psychiatric treatment and make sure they get it,
perhaps preventing them from ending up in prison with a life sentence.
This year the Legislature passed and the governor signed SB 1485,
giving local mental health authorities money to identify and treat
these people. That's an important step.

Second, we need to do a better job of providing treatment for the
mentally ill in the prison system. That may mean opening new secure
treatment facilities so they can be separated from other prisoners.

And third, we need a legislative fix to the problem raised by the
appeals court. The Department of Corrections will be working with John
Vasconcellos, chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee, to craft
such a bill. The right bill will be one that makes it possible to keep
truly dangerous inmates in custody, but doesn't make it too easy. We
must take care to protect the rights of inmates to due process under
the law.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry