Governor Threatens to Take Prison Labor Issue to State Voters

Gov. George Deukmejian said Wednesday that he will “seriously consider” going directly to the voters with an initiative if the Legislature blocks efforts under way to develop plans to put prisoners to work both inside and outside of state government.

Deukmejian has long been frustrated by the Democratic-controlled Legislature in his efforts to put convicts to work. A number of proposed bills have run into legislative roadblocks over the years. But Deukmejian has never before threatened to mount an initiative campaign.

Says Public Supports Plan

“The public is very supporting of efforts to try to make the prisons as self-supporting as possible, trying to give to those prisoners the kind of job skills they need so that once they get out that they can get back into the mainstream and not become repeat career criminals,” Deukmejian said during a Capitol news conference.

The governor was not specific about the kinds of new jobs he envisions for prisoners.

The state Constitution prohibits the state from contracting with private businesses for convict labor, but the same section also says the Legislature “shall, by law, provide for the working of convicts for the benefit of the state.”

Currently, convicts are limited to work within state government or selling prison-produced goods to other state agencies. They help put out fires or perform community work, undergo vocational training, or work in prison industries. In the latter role, the prisoners build desks and office furniture to sell to other state agencies, make all the clothing worn by inmates, manufacture vehicle license plates and other goods.

Sale of the inmate-manufactured products is now limited to other state agencies. The state cannot sell inmate-made goods even to nonprofit agencies, or allow adult prisoners to work on goods that might compete with private industry, although youthful offenders now are used on a limited basis to take reservations for a private airline. Several efforts to give the Administration more freedom in putting prisoners to work have been blocked in the Legislature.

Deukmejian said he recently asked Administration officials “to explore every single possible way of utilizing more and more of these inmates into productive jobs.”

“There are perhaps many jobs that are now being performed by state employees, government employees, that could also be performed by persons who are inmates in the prison system,” Deukmejian said.

Sees Temporary Use

Asked by a reporter if that meant that he wants to replace state workers with inmate labor, the governor said he did not want to lay workers off or replace workers holding existing jobs. He said prisoners could be used when temporary backlogs develop in certain jobs.

As for private industry, Deukmejian said that many companies now use overseas assembly plants to put together their products because of the cheap labor. “There’s no reason why some of those jobs cannot be performed by some of the inmates,” the governor said.

The governor said many Californians are making airline reservations and ticket inquiries with Youth Authority inmates without knowing it. He was referring to what the California Youth Authority considers a successful experiment that uses young offenders as airline reservation clerks for Trans World Airlines when TWA’s normal reservation system is overloaded with inquiries.

Bob Gore, a spokesman for the state Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, said the TWA experiment has worked out because inmates at the Ventura facility where it was developed consider the jobs “highly desirable.” In addition to putting them in “a safe, clean environment,” Gore noted that each day an inmate works gets a day knocked off his or her term. “We haven’t had any problems,” he said.

Gore said that this year 65% of the state’s prison inmates will be working in one job or another, compared to about 54% five years ago. “Our goal is to have 75% of the inmates employed,” he said. He said the other 25% cannot work for security or other reasons.

Deukmejian, in saying he hopes to use prisoners to offset some of the costs of the prison system, touched on one of the fastest growing portions of his budget. Deukmejian proposes to spend $1.7 billion on the Department of Corrections in his new budget, up 154% since he submitted his first budget to the Legislature in 1983.