PRISON GROWTH STEALING FUNDS FROM SCHOOLS, ACTIVISTS SAY

LOS ANGELES -- During the 1960s and early '70s as college students were
protesting the Vietnam War, another movement began pushing its way to the
fore: prisoner rights.

Inspired in part by Angela Davis, the young black militant who was
imprisoned before being acquitted of kidnapping and murder charges in 1972,
the movement focused on overcrowding, rapes and other inhumane conditions
in the nation's jails and prisons.

By the 1980s, that movement largely succumbed to growing calls for tougher
crime laws to combat the proliferation of gangs and illicit drugs.

Now, nearly 30 years later, Davis and others are attempting to enlist a new
generation of college students to spark a prison movement with a much
different emphasis: pressing policymakers to shift budget priorities and
reverse an apparent trend throughout the country that has seen state
spending for prisons rise substantially while budgets for higher education
increase at a lower rate.

A study to be released Wednesday documents the spending disparity in
California. The study says appropriations for higher education dropped 3
percent while prison spending has risen 60 percent in the last seven years.

California Department of Corrections officials say it is naive to suggest
that funds for higher education are being siphoned off by prisons. There
are other factors in the equation, these officials note, including
Proposition 13, the 1978 law that put a cap on property-tax increases, and
growing demands from education, public assistance and numerous other budget
items.

The higher-education budget in California is $11.3 billion, nearly triple
the funding for corrections. State officials say that despite the prison
growth, university spending will continue to be a top priority.

Davis, 53, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, as
well as college students and other former prisoners, have scheduled a
conference this weekend at UC-Berkeley titled "Critical Resistance: Beyond
the Prison Industrial Complex" to draw attention to the issue.

The conference is expected to call for a moratorium on prison construction
and a focus on preventive measures to keep people out of prison.

Davis "sees this as an ongoing work of what went on in the '60s," said
Robin Templeton, a prison activist who is organizing the conference with
Davis. "California is building (colleges and universities) 20 times slower
than prisons. That creates a very devastating reality."

The state's spending priorities have had a devastating effect on low-income
and minority students who "have a higher likelihood of ending up in prison
than a university," said Khaled Taqi-Eddin, a policy analyst at the
Washington-based Justice Policy Institute and co-author of the study.

According to the study, the number of African-American males enrolled
full-time at University of California and California State University
campuses decreased to 8,767 last year from 8,974 in 1990. During the same
period, the number of black men incarcerated in the California prison
system rose to 44,617 from 32,145.

Nationally, the prison population has grown about eightfold to about 2
million over the last 30 years. California's prison population has risen to
160,000 from 19,000 in 1977, and the number of prisons has nearly tripled,
to 33, during that same period.

"The governor and the legislature are responding to demands of the public
who are saying they want career criminals off the streets and they want to
be safer in their homes," said Tip Kindel, an assistant director in the
Department of Corrections.

"Most of these new prisons have been authorized by voters at the ballot.
The crime rate is significantly lower than it was 20 years ago, and that's
because more career criminals are in prison and prison sentences are much
longer."

California's "three-strikes" law, which requires violent criminals to serve
life sentences upon their third felony conviction, is helping propel the
need for more prisons. But conference organizers also attribute the
population growth to efforts to incarcerate non-violent criminals, who make
up 60 percent of the prison population.

They want state officials to cut prison spending by finding alternatives to
incarcerating drug abusers and petty thieves.

They cite an Oregon program that keeps petty thieves out of prison but
forces them to work at a so-called restitution center until they can pay
back their victims.

"We want to promote (these kinds of programs) among policymakers," said
Vincent Schiraldi, director of the Justice Policy Center. "These programs
are not soft on crime but smart on crime."

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski