Crime And Punishment

After decades of prison planning work in California and across the country, I've seen two prevailing assumptions about crime and punishment finally begin to crack amid years of real-world testing. The first is that prisons are the primary way to reduce crime. The second is that law enforcement will not support changes that reduce incarceration. Both of these changing perceptions are converging now in California, just when the state must make major changes to protect its public safety and fiscal security.

Rather than concentrate on the execution of the crime, this week's DVDs focus on what comes afterward: first the trial, then, for the unlucky, time behind bars. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, including best picture, 1959's “Anatomy of a Murder” is one of the great American courtroom dramas. Directed by Otto Preminger, it features Jimmy Stewart as a small-town lawyer defending Ben Gazzara against a murder charge brought by George C. Scott's hard-driving prosecutor. Archetypes don't get more archetypal than this, with a great Duke Ellington score thrown in for good measure.

Every so often, something happens to suggest that the reasonable people who are supposed to be running the world have as uncertain a grip on it as everybody else. We suddenly realize that the people on top haven't been going on the facts at all but on intuition, a kind of grand hunch about what the world is or ought to be. Facts will be adduced, invented or suppressed in order to bolster this hunch. This is very much the way artists work--with this difference: Artists know they're inventing.

After decades of prison planning work in California and across the country, I've seen two prevailing assumptions about crime and punishment finally begin to crack amid years of real-world testing. The first is that prisons are the primary way to reduce crime. The second is that law enforcement will not support changes that reduce incarceration. Both of these changing perceptions are converging now in California, just when the state must make major changes to protect its public safety and fiscal security.

In my 43 years as a professional bail bondsman, and after thoroughly studying and analyzing the overall picture of crime and punishment, I have come up with the following observations: Start publishing the names, addresses, occupations and charges of all the prostitutes, johns, drunk drivers and all persons arrested or detained in a 24-hour period. Make a "crime section" in your paper similar to your sports financial and society sections. Crime is the most important activity in the minds of the public, according to all the public polls that are taken.

There are echoes of various canonical novels in the new works by Joshua Mohr and Grace Krilanovich (a Times staff writer). Mohr's "Termite Parade" is rooted in the psychological drama of "Crime and Punishment" that springs from a single, defining act of desperation. Krilanovich's "The Orange Eats Creeps" is a brooding, brash tale of vampires set in the Pacific Northwest — ask any teenager to find a corollary there in pop culture. But each is imbued with raw nerves, kinetic prose and cutting glimpses of the human heart that could make each a reference point of its own. They'll read from each here.

SERIES Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Christmas: The chef expands his holiday menu with a honey-glazed ham and pumpkin soup in this new episode (7 and 10 p.m. BBC America). Skating With the Stars: A winner is chosen on the season finale of this figure skating competition series (8 p.m. ABC). No Ordinary Family: The Powells must stop using their special powers when Stephanie's (Julie Benz) parents (Cybill Shepherd, Bruce McGill) show up in this repeat (9 p.m. ABC). Independent Lens: The two-part documentary "The Calling" concludes with a new generation of students preparing to become ordained religious professionals (9 p.m. KCET)

For all the teenage sex in the works on the new ABC high school drama "Life as We Know It," the best of the story lines involves the flirtation between the grown-up Ms. Young (Marguerite Moreau), a teacher, and her student Ben (Jon Foster). He spies on her as she's undressing after dance rehearsal; she turns to give him a better look. She catches him drinking a beer at the school carnival; he's embarrassed, she smiles.

Kamala Harris, the state's next attorney general, last week announced a transition leadership team that was a marvel in its political heft: two former secretaries of State ? of the country, not of California ? and a host of other luminaries. The list drew attention for its implication that Harris' ambitions were not stunted by her nail-biter victory over Republican Steve Cooley in November. But as much as it might have hinted at her future as a candidate for an even higher office, the list also underscored Harris' intent to accomplish something harder: upending decades of California attitudes about crime and punishment.

With regard to the new Paul Simon musical, "The Capeman," based on the story of a man who became a writer while serving prison time for two murders (Morning Report, Nov. 2), perhaps the choreographer could contact Salvador Agron's former cellmates to join the chorus line and call them the Death Row Dancers. Doesn't anyone besides me find this appalling? BETTYLOU BRENNAN Los Angeles

SERIES Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Christmas: The chef expands his holiday menu with a honey-glazed ham and pumpkin soup in this new episode (7 and 10 p.m. BBC America). Skating With the Stars: A winner is chosen on the season finale of this figure skating competition series (8 p.m. ABC). No Ordinary Family: The Powells must stop using their special powers when Stephanie's (Julie Benz) parents (Cybill Shepherd, Bruce McGill) show up in this repeat (9 p.m. ABC). Independent Lens: The two-part documentary "The Calling" concludes with a new generation of students preparing to become ordained religious professionals (9 p.m. KCET)

Kamala Harris, the state's next attorney general, last week announced a transition leadership team that was a marvel in its political heft: two former secretaries of State ? of the country, not of California ? and a host of other luminaries. The list drew attention for its implication that Harris' ambitions were not stunted by her nail-biter victory over Republican Steve Cooley in November. But as much as it might have hinted at her future as a candidate for an even higher office, the list also underscored Harris' intent to accomplish something harder: upending decades of California attitudes about crime and punishment.

There are echoes of various canonical novels in the new works by Joshua Mohr and Grace Krilanovich (a Times staff writer). Mohr's "Termite Parade" is rooted in the psychological drama of "Crime and Punishment" that springs from a single, defining act of desperation. Krilanovich's "The Orange Eats Creeps" is a brooding, brash tale of vampires set in the Pacific Northwest — ask any teenager to find a corollary there in pop culture. But each is imbued with raw nerves, kinetic prose and cutting glimpses of the human heart that could make each a reference point of its own. They'll read from each here.

The NCAA committee that will meet beginning Thursday to determine the fate of USC athletics will do more than hear testimony, look at the evidence investigators have gathered and ponder the university's response. It will also consider precedent -- past cases with similarities to whatever findings it makes concerning allegations that star football and men's basketball athletes received benefits in violation of college rules. "We try to be consistent," Paul Dee, chairman of the NCAA Committee on Infractions, said recently.

With the condemned prisoner's petition for clemency denied by the governor, one of Stanley Tookie Williams' closest associates stood outside the forbidding iron gates of San Quentin Prison at nightfall Monday and lamented Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision. "I was surprised, because I thought the governor would have mercy," said Fred Jackson, 67, who runs the Internet Project for Street Peace, one of Williams' programs to reduce gang violence.

A violent, surreal inquiry into morality, causality and the zero-sum nature of revenge, "Oldboy" tells the story of a man abducted and locked in a hotel room for 15 years by an unknown enemy. Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), a Seoul businessman on a drunken bender, lands in a police station one night and has to be bailed out by a friend. Back on the street, he mysteriously disappears while his friend's back is turned. He wakes up in a strange hotel room, where he remains, inexplicably, imprisoned.