PRISON PLAN WORRIES LOCAL OFFICIALS

The governor's suggestion to release thousands of prison inmates
before their sentences are complete is getting a lukewarm reception
from local law enforcers.

As part of his budget proposal Thursday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
proposed releasing some 22,159 non-violent inmates determined to be
"low risk" and who have less than 20 months remaining on their
sentences. He also proposed eliminating active supervision of 18,522
parolees and making it far more difficult to return lawbreakers to
prison

"We don't like it," said Solano County Sheriff Gary Stanton on Friday.
"We expected it. There has been a lot of talk about this in recent
months, but the whole idea is contrary to what we in law enforcement
want to see."

Vacaville Police Chief Richard Word agreed.

"My concern is that some of these inmates may have been sentenced for
non-violent offense but that does not mean they don't have violent
priors or violent records," he said.

Word came to Vacaville from the Oakland Police Department where he
said his experience was that many non-violent offenders were
incarcerated for drug offenses. "And what we saw is that they steal to
support their drug habits and it fuels that environment and can result
in more violent crime," Word said.

District Attorney David Paulson said there is one part of the release
proposal that could help and grew out of a meeting he attended several
months ago with the governor.

At the meeting, the governor was talking to the state's law
enforcement community about a pilot program in Orange County where
felons could earn early release from parole with good behavior and how
it might be applied statewide. Paulson asked him to reconsider and
instead place inmates on a "banked" parole wherein they wouldn't
report regularly to a parole agent, but could still be subject to
search and seizure by law enforcement.

"We were looking for a way to protect public safety and still meet the
concerns of the courts and legislature," Paulson explained. "And I
guess it's a good thing we asked, because that's part of the
governor's proposal."

Paulson said release of inmates is never going to be greeted with
enthusiasm from law enforcement, but maintaining parole's search-and-
seizure laws offers some measure of protection.

Still, 22,000 inmates is a lot, said Vacaville's Word.

"The Orange County program was talking about a few hundred parolees,"
he said. "But 22,000? That's a lot of parolees and they are not all
coming out drug-free."

Some release seems inevitable, though, said Paulson.

Indeed, Schwarzenegger said the state may have no choice because a
pending lawsuit in federal court could result in a cap on the prison
population.

"The federal judges are breathing down our neck," he
said.

A spokesman for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association
said it was hard to take the "early release" plan seriously,
predicting it would never emerge from the Legislature.

Word said for his part, he's hoping the plan is "just a starting point
for discussions and we'll see where it goes."