Tuesday, May 04, 2004 - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should close four existing state prisons and not open a new, mostly built one in order to save money, activists said Monday.

Californians United for a Responsible Budget -- a coalition of more than 40 groups aiming to cut spending by lowering the number of inmates and prisons -- hosted a conference call Monday with members of a "shadow commission" it formed to mirror a state panel evaluating future prison closures.

"The (state's) four lead commissioners are people who were one way or another politically, economically and administratively responsible for building the system that is in crisis," said University of Southern California Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore, a CURB shadow commissioner on leave from her longtime University of California, Berkeley post.

Another shadow commissioner, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, said California has "created a monster" in its prison system.

"We do have a unique opportunity now to change what we've been doing wrong," he said, citing the recent spotlight on problems in prison governance and spending. State lawmakers pushing changes -- notably Sens. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, and Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles -- deserve strong public support, he added. "We must cry out and demand reform."

CURB's plan calls for not opening the new state prison at Delano and for closing Pelican Bay State Prison, Folsom State Prison, Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla and the California Correctional Center at Susanville. Doing so would cut prison capacity by 16,574 beds, CURB says; the CDC projects a 15,000-inmate decrease by mid-2005.

Gilmore said the state also should force the CDC to obey 2003's mandates to reduce population by releasing some inmates early for supervised drug treatment; offering more time off for good behavior; and limiting the number of parolees returned to prison for minor violations.

CURB commission member Dawn Williams, representing the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly, cited higher student fees and tightened admissions for public university students. "Students have been carrying the burdens of the budget for years. We wonder, why can't prisons share the burden?"

About 7.5 percent of the state's general fund spending would go to prisons under Schwarzenegger's 2004-05 budget plan, compared with 7.9 percent this year. J.P. Tremblay, spokesman for the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency that includes the CDC, said Monday he can't comment on specific closures. "There are a number of things being looked at.

"We are committed to making the $400 million savings we were asked to provide" by Schwarzenegger, he said, mostly through more cost-efficient operations and by obeying 2003's population-reduction mandates.

"Anybody who runs a prison would like to be to the point where we can shut prisons down because that means crime is down ... but we're not going to risk public safety just to save a buck."

Finance Department spokesman H.D. Palmer said testimony before Romero's committee this week should shed light on progress made so far, and his department continues to work with CDC on budget clarity and accountability.

"We're having to change a culture that has developed for years," he said. "It's something we are aggressively pursuing but it's something that's going to take some time."