A hoary aphorism about crime goes like this: "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime." We need a similar warning about the politics of crime: "If you won't spend the dime, don't whine about crime."
Over the past three decades, we Californians and those we elect to public office have voted repeatedly to lock up more miscreants for ever-longer stretches behind bars, but at the same time we've shied away from spending what it takes to guard, feed, clothe, medicate and educate those we incarcerate.
California had about 20,000 state inmates when the politics of crime heated up in the 1970s. Republicans adroitly exploited rising public fears about crime, knocked off three seemingly entrenched Democratic state senators by branding them soft on crime, and threw a big scare into other Democrats, including then-Gov. Jerry Brown.
Judges were not immune to the anti-crime wave. Local judges got tougher on sentences, and voters ousted three state Supreme Court justices, including Chief Justice Rose Bird, for blocking death sentences.
The state's inmate load eventually mushroomed to 171,000, and county jails now have an additional 80,000 behind bars. Keeping that quarter-million men and women in custody now costs the state about $10 billion a year, 20 times as much as it did 30 years ago, and local governments an additional $2.4 billion, according to the Legislature's budget analyst.
A federal judge has already taken over the state prison health system and is demanding that many billions more be spent on new medical facilities and staffing. Meanwhile, other judges are weighing whether to intervene on overcrowding, 20 counties have jail caps imposed by judges and 12 other counties have implemented voluntary caps.
If anyone even dares to suggest that low-risk state inmates be released before their terms are up, self-appointed crime-fighters immediately raise the alarm, but Republican politicians who make the most noise are the same ones who complain about budget deficits and oppose new taxes, as a state Assembly debate on creating a sentencing commission demonstrated the other day.
Prisons have been the fastest growing segment of the state budget in recent years and if conservative politicians had their way, it would grow even faster. Take, for instance, Proposition 6, which would impose restrictions on early release of inmates and whose chief sponsor is Republican state Sen. George Runner of Lancaster.
The Legislative Analyst's Office estimates that if enacted, Proposition 6 would cost taxpayers more than a half-billion dollars more a year to implement. And then there's Proposition 9, another tough-on-crime measure. The analyst's office can't pin down its costs but says they'd be "hundred of millions of dollars" a year.
We won't pay for the inmates we already have behind bars and backers of these measures want more locked up? Where's the logic? Where's even a shred of accountability?
Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters.
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