There's an old kids' joke, "How do you know if there's an elephant under your bed?" Answer: "Your nose is touching the ceiling."

As California lawmakers and the governor grapple with the reality of multibillion-dollar deficits stretching into the future, they can no longer ignore the elephant in the rotunda: prison spending. That elephant has become a mammoth because lawmakers over the last 25 years have created longer and longer sentences and reduced the ability of prisoners to shave off prison time for good behavior.

The charts show the result. A greater proportion of the state's population now is in prison and a greater share of the prison population is aged. Older people have greater health needs and so cost a lot to keep in prison. They are taking up beds, producing overcrowded prisons.

Those in prison aren't eligible for Medicare, the federal health program for the nation's elderly. Nor are they eligible for Medi-Cal, the health program for the poor in which costs are shared between the state and the federal government. So the entire cost of health care for older, sick prisoners falls on the state.

All of this is now in the federal courts because the state has refused to create alternatives for dealing with feeble, chronically ill prisoners to reduce prison population – or to pay for building facilities to house these prisoners.

One court is examining whether to cap prison population. Another is looking at whether to force the state to pay for seven 1,500-bed facilities. Both courts could make decisions as early as January.

The need for lawmakers and the governor to act is urgent – before the courts impose solutions. They should get on this immediately, working on three fronts:

• There's no avoiding building some 1,500-bed facilities to house older, infirm prisoners. Some remain dangerous, and alternatives to prison for those who aren't dangerous would take some time to implement.

J. Clark Kelso, the court-appointed prison health care receiver, has a plan for three phases of building. Phase I would build three facilities at a cost of $3.43 billion. Unless the state in the next two years has alternatives for 4,800 to 5,900 older, infirm prisoners who can't function in a regular prison,the state must build these facilities.

But if they take steps now to reduce the older, infirm prison population before 2012 , lawmakers can avoid building four more facilities in Phases II and III.

And they can avoid having the court take money directly out of the general fund by passing a bond package that would spread costs over 25 years and begin payments three years from now. Senate Republicans who killed that option need to revive it.

• Corrections officials should evaluate all 22,500 prisoners age 50 and over and determine which of them pose a public safety risk.

This is not about releasing prisoners out of compassion. It is about economic reality.

Even prisoners who committed violent crimes should be evaluated – such as a guy who murdered someone when he was 28 and has spent the last 30 years in prison, but who now is blind, diabetic, in a wheelchair, and has failing kidneys.

The evaluations should look at their behavior in prison and what percentage of their sentence has been served. For those who do not pose a safety threat, the state should find alternative placement in the community – and help them apply for Medi-Cal and/or Medicare if they have no family with insurance.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have urged the federal government to help California during the financial crisis. Getting low-risk prisoners out of state prison is a way for the state to tap federal health care dollars.

• The Legislature should establish an independent sentencing commission, as other states have, to provide new sentencing guidelines. The commission is needed to organize California's 1,000 sentencing laws and create guidelines that constrain judges' discretion but also provide for some flexibility in sentencing.

If California does not change its sentencing system, the number of prisoners age 50 and over is projected to go from 22,500 today to more than 40,500 – a whopping 25.6 percent of the prison population – by 2018.

It's no mystery what prevents the state from dealing with this issue: Politicians of both parties fall over each other to see who's tougher on crime. The latest is Attorney General Jerry Brown asserting, falsely, that if Californians want "top-drawer care," they have to "go to prison." You can tell who's running for governor in 2010.

So here's another joke on California. What did lawmakers and the governor say when the elephant moved into the Capitol? Nothing! They didn't notice.

Except this is no longer a laughing matter. Our nose is flat against the ceiling already, and the elephant is still growing.