LAWS RAISING INMATE NUMBERS FORCE DEBATE ON NEW PRISONS

Someone once asked Jesse James why he robbed banks.

"Because," the outlaw supposedly replied, "that's where the money is."

There will always be money in banks. But now, in California, the money also
is in the guys who rob banks. And kill people. And steal cars, sell drugs,
or break into houses.

Crime and criminals are the state's growth industry, right up there with
computers and biotechnology. California's prison population has soared to
155,000 from just 35,000 a little more than 15 years ago. And the
lawbreakers keep coming.

State legislators and voters clearly want to lock these people up. "Three
strikes" puts away criminals convicted of a third felony for 25 years to
life. Another new law - "10-20-life" - adds to the sentence of anyone who
uses a gun in a crime. And violent criminals no longer can get their
sentences cut in half by, as the governor says, folding shirts in the
prison laundry.

Paying the tab for this policy has not been as popular. It costs the
taxpayers $22,000 to keep an inmate behind bars for a year - four times
what we spend on the average public-school pupil. And a new prison new
costs $250 million to build, about the same as a state-of-the-art
major-league baseball park.

So we have a problem. More than 10,000 additional inmates will pour into
the prison system in each of the next five years. But we have room for only
about 20,000 more. Once the prisons are full, sometime in 1999, a federal
judge could force the state to release some of those inmates rather than
house them in overcrowded conditions.

To catch up, Gov. Pete Wilson wants to build four new prisons. That's the
traditional approach. In a more provocative move, the governor also wants
to hire private companies to lock up as believes, can be built more quickly
and run more cheaply than state lockups.

Which brings us back to the money. At least two private prison companies
are ready to jump at Wilson's offer. One firm is so eager that it is
preparing to build a central valley prison on spec - hoping that when it's
done the state will want to use it.

But not everyone likes the notion of prisons for profit - least of all the
guards who work in them now and get a better deal from the state than they
would from a private company. County sheriffs and their deputies, who run
local jails, aren't wild about the idea, either.

The sheriffs are backing a constitutional amendment that would stop state
and local government from using private firms for public safety jobs. The
measure, proposed by Sen. Bill Lockyer, a Democratic candidate for attorney
general, is likely to gain the support of the powerful state prison guards
union as well. If it clears the Legislature, it would go before voters in
November.

Lockyer's logic: Private companies aren't as accountable as government
employees. Someone given a gun by the state, he says, ought not to be
answering to a corporation's board of directors.

"It seems to me that when the use of government force is contemplated in
arresting people, incarcerating people, it's important in a democratic
society that those powers be constrained by the electorate," Lockyer said.

The private prison companies counter that the profit motive is a powerful
incentive for accountability. If they screw up, they say, they would pay
big-time, more than would some state bureaucrat in the chain of command
when a public prison has a problem.

It's a tough question that won't get any easier as the prisons fill and the
state grows more desperate. But it's one that voters may soon have to
answer.