SPINELESS IN CALIFORNIA

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California was on the mark when he said
this week that the state needed to change policies that spend more
money on prisons than on the state's once-vaunted higher education
systems, which are being bled to death in budget cuts. But Mr.
Schwarzenegger was way off the mark when he suggested that the answer
was to privatize prison services or to pass yet another constitutional
amendment, this time to limit prison spending.

States that privatize prisons sometimes save money, but they can also
buy trouble by ceding control to companies that put profit first and
inmate welfare a distant second. That would be disastrous for the
California prison system. It is already under pressure from scores of
court orders that require it to reduce its growing prison count and
provide adequate mental, medical and dental services, as well as
better care for the disabled.

It would generally be impossible for the state to unilaterally lower
prison spending without first cutting the prison population
dramatically. And because so much prison spending is nondiscretionary,
a constitutional amendment that reduced spending -- without cutting the
prison population -- would be doomed to failure. It would also draw the
ire of judges who have rightly run out of patience with the state's
long list of failures in this area.

The only real way for California to cut prison costs is to reverse
sentencing policies that have filled its prisons to bursting and have
driven up costs by about 50 percent over the last decade alone. Among
other things, too many minor offenders are sent to jail for too long.

The Legislature tinkered at the margins of this problem last year. But
real sentencing reform has proved impossible in the State Assembly,
where lawmakers live in fear of the politically powerful corrections
officers' union lobby, which enforces the status quo by labeling
reformers as soft on crime.

Sleight of hand will not cut prison costs in California. To do that,
lawmakers will need to find their spines.