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Naked city?
A class-action suit seeks damages for thousands of New Yorkers the Giuliani administration admits were strip-searched after being arrested for misdemeanors.
By Ron Feemster
[06/01/99]

New York stakes
The GOP is putting out a line that Hillary Clinton's entry into the Senate race would hurt Al Gore's presidential bid, but the opposite is true.
By Joe Conason
[06/01/99]

As the world yawns
The Clinton spin machine kicks into overdrive to protect the president against the damaging allegations in the Cox Report.
By Jake Tapper
[05/28/99]

Let the litigation begin
Kevorkian's lawyer's suit against the Columbine killers' parents is just the beginning.
By Dave Cullen
[05/28/99]

Traitor in chief
Clinton has not only dismantled our national defense, he has given away our military advantages to enemies all too willing to destroy us.
By David Horowitz
[05/28/99]

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There was hope that this year would be different. For the first time in 16 years, the governor comes from the same party that controls both the state Senate and Assembly. But new Democratic Gov. Gray Davis is quickly finding that some members of his own party are emerging as his most vocal opponents.

One key internecine battle is erupting over the governor's proposal to spend $335 million for a new state prison to hold 4,500 convicts. Over the last six years, the Democratic-controlled Legislature has been the primary obstacle in blocking new public funding for prisons. Those spats were annually written off as mere partisan squabbles between Democrats and the former governor, Republican Pete Wilson.

But Davis, like Wilson before him, was elected with the help of the powerful prison guards union, which spent $2 million on an independent campaign on Davis' behalf. More prison construction means more prison guards, and more jobs for the union. Meanwhile, a union spokesman claims California prisons are in a state of crisis, and a failure to build new prison beds could soon lead to federal mandates to release prisoners because of lack of space.

"This proposal being backed by the governor is exceedingly modest," said Jeff Thompson, legislative director for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA). "Gray Davis has inherited a six-year delay on prison construction authorization and I think what you're seeing is a sincere attempt on his part to take some modest steps toward solving these problems."

California has built 21 new prisons in the past 15 years, a construction boom that a spokesman for the attorney general's office called "the largest publicly funded construction campaign since the pyramids." California voters routinely approved new bonds to build new facilities to house a prison population that has mushroomed by more than 500 percent since the mid-1980s, thanks in large part to tougher sentencing laws.

But in the 1990s, as the state sunk into recession, voters neglected to pass new prison bonds, leaving the state with more criminals than it had rooms to house. In spite of the earlier construction boom, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office estimates that the state still needs six new prisons, with a total price tag of more than $1.5 billion, to meet the current need.

Left-leaning Democrats, including Attorney General Bill Lockyer and the leaders of both legislative houses, have advocated reform in sentencing and increased funding for crime prevention programs, as well as developing more cost-effective ways of treating nonviolent offenders. While still in the state Senate, Lockyer routinely blocked new prison funding in the state budget, while former Gov. Wilson was unwilling to support his push for more literacy and drug treatment programs in prisons.

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