Hard Drives Lessen Hard Time : Prisons: Inmates repair computers that are donated to schools and earn time off their sentences.

Computer-starved schools in California now have a unique source for equipment. It lies about 150 yards inside an electric death fence in Lancaster.

There, Dwayne Baxter tests microchips and replaces hard drives, turning castoff equipment into usable computers that are donated to public schools. He and about 30 co-workers receive no pay for their work. They are compensated with an even more valuable commodity--time.

These workers are all maximum-security inmates at the state’s Los Angeles County prison. For every day they spend repairing the computers, they can get up to a day taken off their sentences. More than 100 prisoners are on a waiting list to get into the program.

Baxter, 27, said recycling the computers is far more rewarding than other prison jobs.

“If it weren’t for the fact that this is going to the kids, I wouldn’t be as enthusiastic,” said Baxter, who must spend at least another five years behind bars for an offense he declined to name.

“We all wish we had done something a little differently out on the streets. This class lets me know I’m doing something positive. I’m not just serving it day after day, getting my meals and going to sleep.”

Officials at the California Department of Corrections are also enthused. The program, launched in August at Lancaster and three other state institutions, will soon be in seven other California prisons. Within a year, officials estimate, inmates will be refurbishing up to 3,000 computers a month.

Recently, the Lancaster prison donated 100 revamped computers to schools in Los Angeles, Compton and Tehachapi. Almost 300 more were turned over to the Detwiler Foundation, which distributes computers statewide through its Computers for Schools Program.

Proponents say the benefits of this project are found in prisons as well as in classrooms. “The hope is that many of the people who learn that skill will find that it’s easier to earn money than to steal it,” said La Jolla businessman John Detwiler, president of the foundation bearing his name. “For every criminal who is rehabilitated, there may be fewer victims.”

When the project is up and running at 11 prisons, inmates are expected to produce at least 70% of the computers handed out by the foundation. The other 30% will be refurbished at vocational training centers, community colleges and California Youth Authority facilities.

The need for computers in California classrooms is beyond dispute. A 1994 survey found that California’s kindergarten through 12th-grade public schools possessed one computer per 19.5 students. That ranked the state 48th in providing students with computers. Top-ranked Wyoming has one per 8.1 students.

Detwiler created his foundation in 1991 to collect personal computers discarded by large companies when the companies upgraded. But many of the used computers the foundation obtained were not in top working condition.

The Department of Corrections agreed to take on some of the repair work. As of June 15, the four prisons in the pilot program had refurbished 1,547 computers.

Each prison retains up to 20% of the computers repaired for donation to any school or other group it deems worthy. Ernest Roe, warden of the Lancaster prison, recently met with Antelope Valley school superintendents to set up a process to get some of these units into the classrooms.

During the prison project’s first year, computer refurbishing was somewhat slow because the inmates had to learn how to disassemble, test and repair the units. Often, inmates had to improvise, combining parts from two donated machines to produce one working model.

As the inmates have gained experience, prison instructors say, the speed of the repair process has picked up.

“All I’m asking of my guys is one machine per man, per day,” said Harry Broddock, who was hired to teach some of the inmates under the prisons’ vocational training program. “At the end of each day, I have 20 machines ready to be shipped out.”

Inmates in the class face tight security measures. Parts and tools are counted regularly. Inmates who leave the work area must pass through a metal detector and undergo a strip search.

Modems are removed from all computers handled by inmates so they cannot use them to make contacts outside the prison. Computer diskettes are also closely watched to make sure an inmate doesn’t use one in a prison office computer to download records.

“We’ve also got a business to run, keeping track of these guys,” said Hugh Haines, a Corrections Department administrator who oversees the computer repair classes. “We don’t want them messing with our system.”

For inmate Rashid McCarter, 29, one of Broddock’s star pupils, computers are a key to a brighter future. McCarter has spent 11 years in prison and did not want to talk about how much more time he has to go.

But when he is released, he believes a job fixing computers will keep him on the outside.

“The majority of people who come back do so because they didn’t have a career plan,” McCarter said. “This is definitely the road to the right track.”