EDITORIAL : APPLES AND ORANGES COMPARISON OF PRISON AND HIGHER EDUCATION SPENDING PROVES ONLY ONE THING: THERE'S TOO MUCH CRIME.

The San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice wasn't the first group to charge that California is sacrificing social programs so it can spend more money to lock up more people in prisons. Nor will it be the last. It is just the latest.

This time, the program that supposedly is being shortchanged is higher education. The foundation's widely publicized report, which was released Wednesday, said:

``While higher education has been forced to turn students away for lack of space, unlimited prison expansion is accommodating the enormous increase in the number of individuals sent to prison.

``Students must make up for the shortfalls in the higher education budget by tuition hikes and ever-increasing fees, while Californians pay the $21,375 cost per prisoner per year for housing rapidly increasing numbers of primarily nonviolent offenders.''

Now there is no denying the fact that expenditures for prisons have increased enormously in recent years. The cost of corrections, according to a report this month on the 1996-97 state budget by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, grew at an average rate of 8.6 percent since 1986-87.

But spending for some other programs also increased sharply. Expenditures for health services, caused mostly by substantial growth in the Medi-Cal caseload, increased at an average annual rate of 8.2 percent.

Nor did expenditures for higher education decline. They grew at an average annual rate of 3.4 percent.

What's more, this year's state budget increases spending for the University of California by 7.8 percent over 1995-96. The increases for state universities and community colleges are 4.8 percent and 5.8 percent, respectively, with most of the added money coming from taxes, not student fees. General fund spending for the Student Aid Commission is $266.9 million, an increase of 10.9 percent.

So what do the comparisons prove? We don't think they prove anything - except that there is too much crime.

It's also useful to remember that one of the political facts of life in

California is that programs compete against each other for funds.

To begin with, the state Constitution sets aside about 42 percent of the general fund for public schools from kindergarten through the 12th grade. Other state agencies and local governments compete for what's left.

That means that higher education must, to cite one example, compete against health services as well as prisons. But then it's easier for foundations with do-gooder agendas to pick on spending for prisons than it is to criticize expenditures for the health care of the poor and elderly.

We acknowledge that California's far-flung - and still relatively inexpensive - system of publicly supported colleges and universities has contributed enormously to this state's growth and prosperity.

But by the same token, it's obvious that crime threatens the safety as well as the economic well-being of millions of Californians. Not even college campuses are immune from crime - including violent crime.

Finally, the state Department of Corrections reported Thursday that the growth of the prison population is slower than expected. That suggests that perhaps tough sentencing laws, including ``three strikes,'' are having a deterrent effect.

The increased emphasis on fighting crime and removing criminals from society reflects the will of the voters in election after election. We believe that these voters, contrary to what the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice suggests, have selected their priorities wisely. And if there's less money to go around for other services, that's more the fault of the criminals than the people they prey upon.