THE PRISON NIGHTMARE SCENARIO

If Sacramento Fails to Find a Quick Solution to Overcrowding, the
Streets May Run With Released Felons.

CONSIDER HOW CRIME in Los Angeles might be affected if the streets
were suddenly flooded with thousands of felons released from state
prison all at once. Now consider that this could well happen within
the next two months if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature
can't hammer out a comprehensive plan to relieve prison overcrowding.

Capitol insiders had high hopes that a prison compromise could be
finalized this week, before today's start of the Legislature's
weeklong spring recess. That didn't happen, which is a little scary
for anyone with a calendar. Three federal judges are mulling requests
for caps on the prison population, which stands at 172,000 in a
system built for 100,000. One of the judges has demanded that the
governor present a reform plan by May 16.

If a cap on the prison population is set somewhere between the two
numbers -- say, at 130,000 -- that would almost certainly mean early
release for the excess inmates, a high percentage of whom hail from
Southern California. They would be heading home with a bus ticket and
little else, except for maybe some new gang connections made behind bars.

The judge's deadline has helped belatedly focus the minds of
lawmakers and prison interest groups. Even the notorious prison
guards union has made noises about playing nice. In the past, the
California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. has spent its
considerable campaign war chest fighting attempts to shorten
sentences for nonviolent criminals while backing tough-on-crime laws
and blocking the most minor solutions to overcrowding, such as the
governor's attempt to send some inmates to prisons in other states.
Yet the organization is now collaborating with longtime opponents to
create a sentencing reform commission for nonviolent felons.

An impartial commission is a good idea. The trouble is that there
have been dozens of good ideas recommended by various studies and
state panels over the last decade, only to be ignored by politicians
cowed by crime-wary voters and the influence-exerting guards union.
The guards, like other late-breaking "reformers," might just be
trying to create a paper trail of deniability before judges step in
and announce unpopular, draconian measures.

Schwarzenegger has been a more convincing reform advocate; his latest
proposal calls for relaxing sentencing and parole rules and providing
community-based facilities for the least dangerous criminals and more
prison drug-rehab and job-training programs. Schwarzenegger also
wants to spend $11 billion to build 78,000 jail and prison beds.

But time is running out. Republicans and some moderate Democrats
aren't wild about appearing soft on crime. But they will be even less
wild about the reaction they get from voters in the event that one of
the early release inmates ends up killing someone. That's a scenario
Sacramento should ponder over spring break.