Flood of Anti-Crime Bills Unprecedented, State Officials Say : Capitol: Several forces converge to propel scores of measures through the Legislature. But how the get-tough laws will be funded is a bit murkier.

SACRAMENTO —  For nearly a decade, Assemblyman Richard Katz was stymied in his repeated efforts to limit the “good time” credits that felons can use to reduce the time they spend behind bars in California’s state prisons.

But last month the Sylmar Democrat finally broke through, winning passage of a measure to require prisoners convicted of violent crimes to serve at least 85% of the time to which they have been sentenced.

Katz’s “truth-in-sentencing” bill was one of scores of proposals intended to crack down on criminals that sailed through the Legislature this year on an unprecedented wave of anti-crime sentiment.

“I think the Legislature as a whole is finally hearing from people who are frustrated and angry about criminals on the street,” Katz said last week as the session came to a close.

Among the other bills headed to Gov. Pete Wilson, who will almost certainly sign them into law: a sweeping proposal that would put first-time child molesters and violent rapists in prison for 25 years to life; a significant broadening of policy to allow teen-agers as young as 14 to be tried as adults, and new restrictions on the rights of inmates, including a provision that would force criminals who profit from their notoriety to give the money to their victims.

The volume of bills referred to the Legislature’s criminal justice committees has doubled in the past two years, one aide estimated. The flood of new proposals prompted the state Senate to split its Judiciary Committee into two panels, one for civil and one for criminal law.

“It’s just amazing what’s happened this year,” said veteran Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), a former undersheriff, who speculated that more anti-crime bills passed in 1994 than in any other year of the two decades he has spent in the Legislature.

Presley, Katz and others in the Capitol say the rush to fight crime was triggered by a convergence of events: the perception that people aren’t as safe as they used to be; highly visible cases such as the kidnaping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas; public furor over the parole of rapist Melvin Carter; President Clinton’s successful push for an anti-crime package intended to put more police on the streets, and election year politics that have seen both Wilson and his challenger, Democrat Kathleen Brown, champion anti-crime legislation.

The surge of crime-busting legislation comes even as figures released last week by the attorney general’s office show that the number of reported crimes, including homicides, dropped 7.5% during the first six months of 1994 compared to last year.

Even so, research by The Times poll in May and June found that crime remained the top concern of Californians--an issue mirrored in the gubernatorial campaign.

That concern crystallized in the wake of last year’s highly publicized drama surrounding Polly Klaas. In October, Klaas was kidnaped from her Petaluma home and was later found dead. A parolee with a long criminal record confessed to the crime, according to prosecutors.

Marc Klaas, Polly’s father, began a crusade to keep convicted violent felons in prison for longer terms and improve the tracking of sex offenders released from custody. He said he was pleased with the Legislature’s performance on the crime issue this year, although each victory is bittersweet.

“It’s unfortunate that marvelous, innocent children have to die to prompt action from our legislators,” he said in an interview.

Even before the kidnaping of Klaas’ daughter, another grieving father, Mike Reynolds of Fresno, launched a drive to place the “three-strikes” scheme on the November ballot after his daughter was brutally murdered by a parolee who tried to steal her purse. The measure requires that habitual criminals serve at least 25 years in prison.

Under pressure from Reynolds’ initiative drive, the Legislature in March passed and the governor signed a nearly identical bill. Some prosecutors and judges--and Marc Klaas--complain that the “three-strikes” legislation will sweep up too many nonviolent offenders along with the violent ones.

But the bill’s advocates said any three-time serious felon is a danger to the public, whether their crimes were violent or not. They said tough anti-crime legislation of that stripe should have been passed long ago.

“The Legislature did not get into gear until a couple of tragedies that were well-covered in the press,” said assistant Atty. Gen. Jack Stevens, who tracks legislation. “It’s a shame to have to be motivated by anecdotal events, disparate events, but that seems to be the way they operate.”

Wilson, after three years of seeing his strongest proposals blocked in legislative committees and trailing Kathleen Brown in statewide polls, seized upon crime as his top reelection issue.

He convened an anti-crime “summit” at the beginning of the year in Los Angeles, expanded a special legislative session to include crime, pressed for passage of a bipartisan, anti-crime package and, near the end of the session last month, staged a public safety rally outside the Capitol to put more pressure on lawmakers.

Not everything Wilson embraced made it through the Legislature. The most notable failure was a proposal by Presley to extend the death penalty to those convicted of murders committed during drive-by shootings and carjackings. The Democrat-dominated Assembly Public Safety Committee blocked the bill.

Several other bills, including the proposal to increase prison terms for first-time rapists, were softened before lawmakers sent them to Wilson’s desk. But the governor on Friday termed the session “an enormous success.”

He added: “We didn’t get everything that we asked for, but we got far more than I think the state of California has seen--ever.”

Wilson’s Democratic challenger, Treasurer Brown, supported most of the bills in his package. But Steve Glazer, a spokesman for Brown, said Wilson’s actions on crime are a case of too little, too late.

Glazer criticized the governor for failing to lobby for President Clinton’s crime bill or for a state measure that would have broadened the ban on military style semiautomatic weapons. He also said Wilson has allowed more parolees and sex offenders to roam loose on the state’s streets.

Wilson dismisses such criticism as unfair sniping from a candidate with no record of her own on criminal justice matters.

Among the bills Wilson is expected to sign is the Katz measure, which is similar to another “truth-in-sentencing” proposal the governor favored, though not as strict.

Under current law, most prisoners who work or take classes can cut their sentences in half. The Katz legislation is aimed at ensuring that violent inmates can work off no more than 15% of their terms in prison.

Katz said that he introduced his proposal after reading that convicted kidnaper Kenneth Parnell was released from prison in 1985 after serving just five years for abducting two young boys, whom he held captive for eight years.

In an interview, Katz recalled how the proposal was buffeted for nine years through the Legislature. Sometimes, he said, liberals opposed the cut in work-time credits because they saw the 50% credit as an incentive for prisoners to behave.

Other times, he added, it was slammed by conservatives as too costly. The cost of the proposal is expected to be $137 million a year in 2000 and $394 million annually by the year 2018.

But this year, lawmakers eager to pass crime bills gave little consideration to the fiscal consequences or the need to build more prisons to house new inmates. They rejected a proposal to put a $1.8-billion bond issue on the November ballot to pay for six new prisons.

Sen. Presley, who was pushing for the bond, noted that with all the anti-crime measures, more inmates will be incarcerated and serve longer sentences.

“It’s hard to understand why the Legislature would vote and pass all the anti-crime legislation . . . yet we can’t get a bond bill out of here to build the facilities to keep them in,” Presley said.

In the closing hours of the legislative session, an attempt fell apart to approve prison bonds because they were linked with education and other forms of bond financing that divided lawmakers.

Some lawmakers deride virtually the entire direction of criminal justice legislation this year and say the crime-fighting programs of Wilson and his Republican predecessor, George Deukmejian, have been miserable failures.

One of the most vocal critics is Assemblyman Tom Bates (D-Berkeley) who said that with more people in prison, the state has less money available to deal with the social problems that contribute to violent criminal behavior.

“We have the toughest laws probably in the world in California right now, and this whole 12 years of tough laws and smashing down on crime has not worked,” Bates said. “It’s basically failed. We now have more people in (prison), but do we feel any safer, do we feel any better?”

New Crime Laws

The Legislature this year passed a number of measures intended to crack down on crime. Here are some of the more important bills in the package that Gov. Pete Wilson has signed or is expected to sign:

* AB 971 (Three Strikes): Doubles sentence for repeat serious felons and requires sentences of 25 years to life for third felony convictions.

* SB 26X (Sex Offenders): Increases sentences to 25 years to life for child molesters and the most violent rapists.

* SB 1309 (Arson): Creates the crime of aggravated arson with a sentence of 10 years to life if the arson is premeditated and intended to cause injury or property damage.

* AB 2716 (Sentence Credits): Requires violent felons to serve at least 85% of their terms. Current law allows these inmates to cut their sentences in half with credits for good behavior.

* SB 1260 (Inmate Rights): Narrows the “inmate bill of rights”; allows prison managers to confiscate pornographic or hate literature, compel testing for communicable diseases, and restrict the ability of inmates to challenge prison regulations.

* SB 23x (Juveniles). Allows 14- and 15-year-olds to be tried as adults for serious crimes.

* SB 40x (Insanity): Prevents the use of insanity as a defense when the defense is based solely on a personality or adjustment disorder, a seizure disorder or use of intoxicating substances.

* SB 1330 (Criminals’ Profits): Takes the profits a felon makes on a business enterprise based on criminal notoriety and places the money into a trust for the benefit of the criminal’s victims. The bill is a reaction to convicted mass murderer Charles Manson’s recent authoring of a rock ‘n’ roll song.

* AB 2500 (Tracking Sex Offenders): Establishes a 900 telephone number operated by the Department of Justice to allow citizens to learn the communities of residence, physical descriptions and criminal records of registered sex offenders.