Take the Common Ground

As long as Sacramento politics blocks the construction of a new state prison in Los Angeles, state law will block the use of any new prisons in other parts of the state. The waste of money and the overcrowding border on the criminal.

A new men’s medium-security prison in San Diego, for example, could sleep 1,000 inmates this very night. A new women’s prison near Stockton could house 400 convicts any day. There are more than enough inmates to fill both; the state system is holding close to 60,000 prisoners, nearly twice its designed capacity. But the new prisons are empty because of the stalemate in Sacramento.

While the deadlock continues, guards hired for the new prisons work elsewhere, earning an extra $75 per day for expenses away from home--a colossal waste of $300,000 for every month that the new prisons remain off limits to prisoners.

The new prisons will remain empty as long as Gov. George Deukmejian stubbornly insists on building a prison on the Crown Coach site near downtown Los Angeles and Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), Senate president pro tem, stubbornly resists the governor’s package. During the deadlock, opposition to the prison in Los Angeles’ predominantly Latino Eastside has solidified and the property has been sold to a new owner, who wants no part of the prison. Deukmejian has complicated the problem by insisting that the state buy the property before a full environmental-impact report is ordered as required by law.

Compromise legislation offered by Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), the sponsor of the original prison legislation, would allow the state to build two prisons: one on a downtown site, an area that is largely Democratic, and a second prison on a rural site, an area that is largely Republican. That offer contains elements that ought to satisfy all parties.

The California Legislature decided in 1982 that the state must build a prison in Los Angeles County, which has no prison within its boundaries although it sends 38% of the male inmates to the bulging state system. The lawmakers also decided to link the site in Los Angeles to the opening of new facilities in order to keep the pressure on Los Angeles to accept a new prison.

Time, money and hundreds of empty new cells are going to waste every day that the stalematein Sacramento continues. The Presley compromise offers common ground on this problem. It is time for the governor and the legislators to get off their high horses and get their feet onto that common ground.