$1.65 BILLION TAGGED TO BUILD SIX PRISONS.

Byline: Mark Katches Daily News Sacramento Bureau

Saying California needs "cheap insurance against real crime," Gov. Pete Wilson wants to spend $1.65 billion to build six new prisons statewide.

But even that won't be enough to contain a swelling inmate population that is growing by 11.8 percent a year.

The Legislative Analyst's Office says the state needs 18 more prisons by the year 2005. In a recent report, the nonpartisan office said the prison population will more than double in the next 10 years, from 136,000 to 306,000.

"We believe (the situation) is extremely dire," said Joe Sandoval, Wilson's secretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency - the fastest-growing agency in state government.

"Our own projections reflect that if we don't get additional bed space built by April 1998, we are going to run out of prison beds," he said.

But critics of the expansion plan say the cost of maintaining those prisons will be an increasingly tough burden on the general fund. They say California must be more aggressive in pursuing alternatives to incarceration.

"Building prisons is ruinous for the state," said Vincent Schiraldi, executive director of the liberal Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco. "The only good that can come of it is short-term political gain."

Schiraldi said the state needs to look harder at other options, including house arrest, drug treatment programs, electronic monitoring and half-way houses, that all cost less than incarceration.

"At this critical juncture, the state needs to move nonviolent offenders out of confinement and into community options," said Schiraldi, who said many inmates are locked up for nonviolent offenses.

Wilson, appearing Thursday at the Sacramento Press Club, said the state has no choice but to build more prisons.

"If we are going to put people away who are dangerous so they don't have access to victims, it means that we have to have sufficient space to lock them up," Wilson said.

Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl, chairwoman of the Judiciary Committee, said she disagrees with the governor's approach.

"It's almost as though the administration has adopted as their slogan, 'Educate the best and lock up the rest,' " said Kuehl, D-Encino. "I think it is a very wrong turn for California to make to be locking up more and more people."

She said the state's inmate population is greater than the combined prison population of Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Finland.

"I've never said I'm against prisons," Kuehl said. "Violent offenders ought to be locked up away from society. But we shouldn't be locking up nonviolent offenders in the same way and for the same duration. I think we've gone a little nuts."

Wilson's budget proposal detailed this week calls for increasing corrections spending 10.8 percent, to $4.3 billion. That includes $360 million to fill 3,591 new positions to staff one prison that just opened and another that will be ready this year.

He wants to ask voters to approve the $1.65 billion bond issue to build six new prisons - which would hold about 27,600 of the 160,000 new inmates whom the state is anticipating by 2005.

As prisons are built, the agency's operational budget will grow because of the staffing levels needed to keep the prisons open.

Between 1965 and 1984, the state did not open a single new prison. During former Gov. George Deukmejian's two terms - from 1982 until 1990 - 10 new prisons were built, adding 22,000 beds.

In the 10 years before the state opened the first new prison in 1984, the inmate population increased an average of 1,000 a year. From 1984 until 1994, however, the number of inmates rose by 9,000 a year.

Now, the agency's inmate population is growing at a rate of 15,000 to 17,000 a year, Sandoval said.

Of that number, the "three strikes, you're out" legislation has had a smaller impact than first expected. As of last October, 3,600 prisoners were serving time in "three strikes" cases - about 3 percent of the total prison population.

Deukmejian said the state is paying the price for years of failing to build new corrections facilities.

"It's become necessary not only to try to catch up, but to stay even," the former governor said. "Unfortunately the criminal element in our society still hasn't gotten the message that if you commit a crime, you will go to prison. Maybe a lot of them don't care. If you have people who are going to commit crimes, what else are you going to do with them?"

Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti said his office is sending about 135 convicted felons to prison every day.

"And there are more that are going to be going and for a lot longer period of time because of the 'three strikes' law," Garcetti said. "The state doesn't want to find itself in a position like we now find ourselves in the county where you are given one year in county jail and are out in 40 or 50 days. It's a joke."

The voters will have the final say on the matter in November when the prison bond issue is expected on the ballot.

Although an earlier prison bond measure failed during the recession, Wilson said he will campaign harder for his latest proposal which also includes about $574 million for juvenile detention centers. He said the economic climate also should help.

"People are in a much more optimistic frame of mind," Wilson said.

Sandoval disputed assertions by Schiraldi and others that the state's prisons are filled with nonviolent inmates, saying that only the worst felons are going to state prison now.

"We've got to deal with the reality that there are bad people out there," said Sandoval, whose agency represented just 3 percent of the budget in 1980 and now accounts for 9 percent.