Tracknum: .3.0.3.32.19990408113817.006c0c7c Pubdate: Thu, 08 Apr 1999 Source: Orange County Register (CA) Section: Opinion,Metro page 9 Copyright: 1999 The Orange County Register Contact: http://www.ocregister.com/ Author: Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee columnist POLITICAL CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Sacramento - Sue Reams was in near tears as she told state legislators Tuesday how her son came to face life in state prison. Son Shane, she said, became involved in drugs and committed some residential robberies, including one of her own home. She turned him in to authorities. "We though he would get some help," the Orange County woman said, "some drug rehabilitation." But Shane's drug involvement continued and 10 years after his original offenses, he was nailed as the lookout in a drug sale to undercover cops. It was his third offense and under the state's "three strikes and you're out" law Shane went to prison for 25 years to life. The Reams case was one of several related to members of the Senate Public Safety Committee as it faced legislation that would soften the law by requiring the third offense to be a violent or serious one. The author of the measure, Sen. Tom Hayden, D-Los Angeles, and others argued that "three strikes" had sent thousands of men and women to long prison terms for relatively minor offenses. Haydan characterized it as "a belief in preventive detention." But the committee heard equally stout defenses of the law from police groups, prosecutors, prison guards and victims' rights advocates, who insisted that the law has contributed greatly to California's dripping crime rates. "Every three-striker made a conscious decision to break the law," said Cynthia Duarte, one of the victims' advocates. "Three strikes" was the most emotional, but certainly not the only, crime issue facing lawmakers Tuesday. Advocates for the competing factions dashed up and down Capitol hallways as two legislative committees dealt with dozens of measures that would either toughen or soften criminal penalties and build more prisons to handle an inmate population nearing the bursting point. While the committee hearings were superficially about statistics, studies and fine points of morality, everyone involved knows that crime remains a very potent political icon. Voter and legislative enactment of the "three strikes" law in 1994 capped 15 years of converting California from one of the most lenient states in the nation, in terms of punishment, to one of the toughest. The state's prison population is now eight times what it was in 1980, and law enforcement groups have become powerful political players - especially the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the prison guards union. The CCPOA's three-pronged agenda of passing tougher crime laws, building more prisons and electing politician friendly to the first two goals has been wildly successful. The guards provided critical funding to get the "three strikes" measure enacted and most recently, backed Democrat Gray Davis' election as governor. It's probably no coincidence that Davis sides with guards and other "three strikes" advocates, saying recently that "stronger sentencing...is one of the reasons crime has gone down" and adding that he is "reluctant" to tamper with the law. But Davis' top prison adviser, Youth and Corrections Secretary Robert Presley, is also warning that in just two years inmates will occupy "every nook and cranny" of the prison system and the state must either build more prisons or "consider alternatives," such as more drug treatment programs. The Senate Public Safety Committee approved Hayden's measure on a partyline vote - Democrats for, Republicans against - and another bill to study the "three strikes" law. But the Assembly Public Safety Committee cleared a $4.1 billion bond issue to build six more state prisons. The debate continues.