IN THE JOINT ON THE JOB

State prisons staff $155 million-a-year enterprise with inmates

Behind razor wire and lethal electric fences at more than 70 factories in
California lies a hidden industrial empire, churning out an astonishing
array of goods ranging from eyeglasses and flags to chairs and muumuus.

It makes things that even Sears Roebuck & Co. does not usually stock, like
the ``bear proof'' locker for $425. Many prices are hard to beat -- women's
blue jeans for $12.10, men's shoes $31.25, 100 percent cotton nightgowns
for $8.25.

The home of this $155 million-a-year enterprise is the California state
prison system, viewed by most people as the maker of license plates, not a
vast network of modern industrial plants producing 24,000 varieties of
1,800 different items.

Yet those familiar with the 15- year-old, prosaically named Prison Industry
Authority know it has produced not only an abundance of goods but also a
fair number of detractors -- ranging from critical state auditors to prison
reformers alleging exploitation and private businesses accusing it of
taking jobs away from law-abiding citizens.

Now, however, the program has received a boost from a new study done at the
University of California at Berkeley. Contrary to the expectations of many,
the vast enterprise is good for the private sector and the state economy,
creating jobs and income for many Californians outside the prison walls,
according to the report.

If the prison industries were to vanish, the state would suffer a net loss
of about 560 jobs, not counting those held by the inmates themselves, and
$218 million a year in sales, concluded researchers in the university's
Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics. About 50 percent of the
business would be lost to out-of-state companies, the study found.

The review, funded by the Prison Industry Authority, is the first ever to
assess the economic impact of the program.

``Intuitively, people would have thought that you are taking sales away
from the private sector,'' said the report's chief author, economist George
Goldman. It is true that some sectors do lose out because of the
prison-made goods, such as private makers of eyeglasses, but they are
outweighed by those who gain, such as civil service personnel who work for
the Prison Industry Authority and outside vendors who sell supplies to the
program.

To put the program in perspective, Goldman noted that its contribution to
the economy is about the same as the state's commercial fishing industry or
its pulp mill operations. Or, put in another light, it is about the same as
a single moderately successful Steven Spielberg film, he said.

Before he began the study, Goldman had little idea of what was going on
inside the prisons, he said. ``I thought like everyone else, vaguely, that
prisoners make license plates.''

The state prison at Folsom still makes the state's plates, as it has since
1947, but nowadays license plates are only 6.5 percent of total Prison
Industry sales racked up by more than 7,000 inmate workers at 23 of
California's 33 prisons. The wide selection of wares can be seen in a
product catalog and on a new Web site, but there is a catch -- only public
agencies can buy the goods.

The operations vary prison by prison, usually with two or three factories
at each. San Quentin makes mattresses and cleaning supplies, Tehachapi does
silk-screening as well as mattresses and mulch, Ione makes various things
from fiberglass.

At Solano State Prison outside Vacaville, the first of the modern
generation of prisons built in the California boom that began in the 1980s,
there is no outward sign of the assembly lines within. Nor is there any
indication after a visitor passes beyond the double row of tall fences
topped by razor wire and the abandoned guard towers made obsolete by the
new, deadly electric fence.

But inside a plain, tan-colored building with walls of corrugated metal,
men in blue jeans and blue chambray shirts line up along tables in a
completely computerized, air-conditioned optics lab, making eyeglasses for
other prisoners and for the state Medi-Cal program.

Inmate Rodger Hill, who earns the top-scale pay of 95 cents an hour
inspecting the new lenses, smiles easily during an interview and says, ``I
prefer this job.'' The 42-year-old from Santa Rosa said he had to wait
three months to get into the highly sought lab. That was nine years ago.

But now the wait is longer. Inmate Ernesto Juarez, 39, of San Mateo County
said he waited two years for one of the 60 openings in the lab. ``I really
wanted to get into the field,'' he said.

And in the nearby building where they make binders and fabric road signs,
Richard Gregg, 32, of Clovis was on a waiting list for 14 months. Now, he
says, he enjoys applying his prison draftsman training to the
75-cents-an-hour task of centering letters and Velcro strips on road signs.

``Just because you're incarcerated doesn't mean you can't take pride in
what you do,'' he said. ``When my mom is driving down the highway, I tell
her to look for this sign.''

Prison officials praise the program as a self-supporting enterprise that
saves taxpayer money, furnishes the prisons and other government agencies
with low-price goods and reduces idleness while teaching inmates valuable
skills and good work habits.

It also lets inmates reduce their sentences one day for every day worked,
and provides a modest wage ranging from 30 to 95 cents an hour -- two big
reasons for the waiting lists.

But not everyone has had kind words for the program.

A scathing state audit in 1996 contradicted the claim that the prison
industries program is self-sufficient and found widespread customer
dissatisfaction. Several products were priced higher than those in the
private market, certainly bad news for the Department of Motor Vehicles,
state universities and other public agencies required to purchase
prison-made goods, the audit said. A follow-up audit found some improvement.

The Prison Industry Authority took issue with the audit. Frank Losco, chief
of public affairs, says it now breaks even, plowing profits back into the
operation. It has already incorporated the new UC Berkeley report into its
brochure, which now speaks of the program's ``positive economic impact'' in
addition to other advantages.

California's program is by no means unique. It is the largest of the state
programs, which is not surprising, given that California has the largest
population in the nation, both in prison and outside. It ranks in the
mid-range in sales per inmate.

And within California prisons, Prison Industry jobs are not the only kind
of work that inmates do. At Solano prison, for example, about 97 percent of
the 5,600 prisoners are employed, but only about 450 work in the Prison
Industry programs. Most of the rest do a wide range of clerical, cleaning
and yard-work chores, while a select 18 prisoners hold the choicest jobs of
all -- earning near minimum wage in a joint venture making furniture for an
outside private firm.

CHART:

PRISON INDUSTRY AUTHORITY

Goods and services produced

Product types 1996-97 Sales

Agriculture $21,092,999

Processed food $12,204,781

Fabric products $32,015,730

Paper and wood products $29,587,434

Metal products $22,385,567

Other goods and services $37,907,581

Total sales $155,194,092

Source: California Prison Industry Authority

1998 San Francisco Chronicle

Checked-by: Pat Dolan