STORM RAISED BY PLAN FOR A CALIFORNIA PRISON

DELANO, Calif. -- This aging farm town has yet to meet the New Economy and
is barely on speaking terms with the old one. It had staked its hopes for
recovery on the nearby North Kern State Prison, but 10 years later, the
prison has not lived up to its promise of lowering the town's 26 percent
unemployment rate or boosting business.

Still, Delano lobbied hard and finally persuaded state officials to build
another maximum-security prison here, right across the road from North Kern
State.

In a ceremony here on July 4, Gov. Gray Davis celebrated the proposed $335
million prison as a win-win: an increase in prison cells for a system the
California Department of Corrections describes as 195 percent over capacity
and a tax-and-revenue boon for Delano, known for its lettuce fields and as
the birthplace of the United Farm Workers.

But the prison, which would be California's 24th new one since the state
began the biggest prison building boom in the nation's history in 1980, may
not be a done deal. The prospect of yet another prison has galvanized
groups across the state, including prison moratorium advocates, liberal
members of the State Legislature and those opposed to the "three strikes" law.

A coalition of these groups has sued the state to stop the prison,
ostensibly on environmental grounds, but in fact to force the state to
re-examine its prison building plans and rethink its strict policies
limiting paroles.

The groups contend that it would be much more beneficial to the state and
offenders if, instead of incarceration, the authorities began pushing
treatment for those convicted of drug use and mentoring and job
opportunities for young people at risk of going astray.

The question the coalition is forcing: does California, with a penal system
larger than that of most countries, need a new prison?

The debate reflects -- and will surely influence -- a larger one nationwide
over whether the country is building too many prisons.

The Department of Corrections and the California Correctional Peace
Officers Association say the planned 5,000-bed prison is needed to help
alleviate overcrowding in a system with roughly 161,500 prisoners in 33
prisons. Farming towns like Delano, where about half the high school
students go to college, celebrate new prisons as job centers (though there
is scant evidence that prisons provide significant employment to local
residents) and as the means to a bigger tax base.

But those suing to stop the prison say that the meager benefits it would
bring to Delano's ailing economy are no reason to build an institution that
is superfluous.

They say it is the result of the Department of Corrections overestimating
projections of new inmates and underusing parole and prison alternative
programs. With the state's crime rate dropping for eight straight years and
the prisoner population dropping for the first time in 23 years, the
critics say, there is no need for yet another state prison.

"Politicians are trying to wear the cloak of being tough on crime to pander
to the fears of voters," said John Vasconcellos, a Democratic state
senator, about why the Delano prison was approved. "But voters have
repeatedly voted down bonds to build new prisons. They want public safety
and leaders that have the insight and leverage to enhance public safety,
but not just by locking people up and treating them badly and having them
come out worse."

Cal Terhune, the director of the Department of Corrections, says that
although the number of prisoners has been leveling off, the population
projections, based on California's growth, "would justify the need for
another facility."

Mr. Terhune says that a dire need exists for maximum-security cells for the
most violent offenders. About 9,000 such inmates are now in cells with less
violent offenders, he said, in a mix that has proved volatile.

Don Novey, president of the correctional officers' union, said that
opponents of the prison had not factored in that the prison system, which
he said was short 2,000 guards, had been incredibly overcrowded for 30 years.

But Mr. Vasconcellos says the timing of the new Delano prison is especially
bad because of a voter initiative on the November ballot, which is expected
to be approved, that demands alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent
offenders charged with drug possession.

"The governor blackmailed us into approving it in exchange for other
things," Mr. Vasconcellos said of the prison. "The opening of the second
Delano prison would be contingent on the Department of Corrections
developing and filling 9,000 therapeutic drug treatment beds."

Mr. Davis had asked for two new prisons, the one in Delano and a smaller
one in San Diego County; the Legislature approved only one.

Prison moratorium groups say the correctional officers' union, the most
powerful union in the state and one of Mr. Davis's major campaign
contributors, is behind pushing the Delano prison through the Legislature.

They point out that as recently as December, the state canceled plans to
build four 500-bed privately run prisons because officials like Mr. Terhune
said that the beds were not needed.

"If the state didn't need 2,000 new beds in December, why does it need
5,000 new beds now?" said Rose Braz, program director for the Critical
Resistance in Oakland, which challenges the proliferation of prisons and is
a main plaintiff in the suit against the Delano prison

In a projection of prisoner population, the Department of Corrections
overestimated what the population would be by Dec. 31, 1999, by 2,648,
according to its figures.

Those fighting the new prison say that regardless of the reason, the
figures prove that a new prison is counterintuitive.

Eric Etelson, of the National Lawyers Guild, another plaintiff against the
Delano prison, said that the suit seeks to get to the root of the prison
population explosion in California. "What's fundamentally wrong with the
California prison system is that it's too big," Mr. Etelson said. "There
are too many people who shouldn't be in prison who are."

For towns that have staked their hopes of rebirth on the construction of a
prison and what it should bring -- for tax purposes, all inmates are
considered residents -- the philosophical debate is about what a prison
will do for the economy.

Skepticism is growing in these communities. One in three new prisons built
in the state since 1980 are in the Central Valley, yet the unemployment
rate in the valley remains at five times the state average.

And here in Delano, a city of 35,000 residents about 25 miles from
Bakersfield, the answer is decidedly mixed. Napoleon Madrid, the mayor,
says that the first prison was supposed to bring jobs and did not. In 1990,
the unemployment rate was the same as it is now.

Only 7 percent to 9 percent of the jobs go to local residents, the prison's
opponents say, and those are the low-paying service jobs.

Of the 1,600 jobs projected for the new prison, Mr. Madrid said that the
Department of Corrections estimated that only 72 would go to the citizens
of Delano.