PRISONS:

The Little Hoover Commission is told the system is overburdened and
drug rehab and job training should be emphasized.

SACRAMENTOCalifornia's prisons and jails are bursting at the seams,but
little is being done to relieve the pressure with alternative sentencing
and drugrehabilitation programs,the state's Little Hoover Commission was
told Thursday.

"We need to act quickly before our overburdened system goes full tilt,"said
Louise Fyock,a member of the state Board of Corrections and director of a
San Diego County resource center for parolees.

She recommended drug treatment and job training both in and after prison
for all druginvolved offenders as a costeffective way of preventing their
return to crime.

Douglas Lipton, senior research fellow at the New Yorkbased National
Development and Research Institutes, told commissioners that such intensive
programs have been shown to reduce recidivism by 25 percent among the
highestrisk drugaddicted inmates herion and cocaine users with long
criminal records.

Those addictoffenders typically each commit 40 to 60 robberies, 70 to 100
burglaries and more than 4,000 drug transactions a year, he said.

Recently, however, more than 50 studies have shown that such offenders can
be redeemed to crimefree, productive lives saving money and cutting down
on crime, Lipton said.

But James Nielsen, a former state senator who heads the Board of Prison
Terms, said he would be leery of and taxpayers would be unlikely to
support focusing the state's slim resources on such highrisk offenders.

He suggested that inmates with a good prison record and a demonstrated
desire to improve themselves would be better bets for communitybased
sentencing programs.

California's prisons currently have only 1,500 beds for inmates undergoing
drug rehabilitation, said Commissioner Stanley Zax. Most do not continue
livein drug treatment in community facilities once paroled a critical
component of successful programs, said Lipton and Fyock.

"Politically, in this state, there's no interest in aftercare," Zax said.

The commission, officially named the Milton Marks Commission on California
State Government Organization and Economy, met at the state Capitol to
examine costeffective alternatives to prison and probation in its third
and final hearing on state correctional policies.

California's prison population has nearly tripled in the past decade, and
continues to grow at a rate of more than 8,000 inmates a year. The
Department of Corrections expects to run out of prison beds by 2000.

County jails are in a similar overcrowding crisis, with an estimated 29,000
inmates released before completing their sentences each month. Many urban
counties cannot impose jail sentences for misdemeanor crimes, even for
repeat or serious offenses.