Decisive action on prison cuts is hard to come by

REPORTING FOR SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers signed off last month on deep cuts to education, healthcare and welfare that many said they could scarcely have imagined in years past. But when it came time last week to address the state's overcrowded prison system -- an area where the Democrats who control the Legislature have long pushed for change -- they froze.

State prisons, criticized as unwieldy and inefficient by experts in California and across the country, have in recent years become the most sacred area of state government, seemingly impervious to transformation because of politics, fear and mistrust.

"You have an absolute hysteria," Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) said last week. Crime and corrections, she said, are "a visceral issue."

With federal courts this month ordering the state to reduce the prison population by 40,000 inmates, a budget crisis that makes it crucial for the state to do so and a major riot recently at a crowded Chino lockup, the likelihood of relieving pressure and saving money at California's correctional institutions has appeared higher than ever.

When state leaders reached a budget deal last month, prisons were the only area of government on which they could not agree how to make the necessary cuts -- $1.2 billion. On Thursday, the state Senate, without a vote to spare, approved a controversial package to fill in the details.

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other supporters say the plan would refocus resources on California's most violent criminals, as other states have done, and reduce the number of low-level offenders churning in and out of expensive prison cells, cutting the inmate population by 37,000 over two years. It would also create a commission to reexamine state sentencing laws.

But in the Assembly, Bass could not round up enough votes from wary Democrats, at least 16 of whom are waging bids for higher office -- including three for attorney general -- that could be hampered if they were seen as soft on crime. With letters, phone calls and personal entreaties at the Capitol, local law enforcement representatives were lobbying lawmakers against the bill, hoping to defeat it.

Legislators listened to attack lines from Republicans: "Mayhem on the streets," Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Atwater) predicted. And Senate GOP leader Dennis Hollingsworth of Murrieta said the changes would let "bad people" take away Californians' life, liberty and property.