PRISON VIOLENCE . . . FOLLOWED BY A PAY RAISE

ONE moment, legislators were hearing about the brutality of the guards at
Corcoran State Prison and their code of silence in covering it up. Next
moment, they were awarding them and others in the 27,000-strong California
Correctional Peace Officers Association a double-digit pay raise as part of
the state budget. The officers were the only state workers whom the
legislature and the governor deemed worthy of a wage increase this year.

The timing was disturbing, and so was the generosity. The pay raises were at
odds with the record of institutional violence. They implied one more
official sanctioning of bad acts.

But then, the ugly history of Corcoran was has been rife with collusion and
a misuse of power: by prison guards, by the union that protects them, and by
the governor who, with $667,000 in union campaign contributions over the
past 10 years, is deferential to it. A long-standing tolerance of
misbehavior will make reforming the prison system difficult to achieve.

For the first half-dozen years after it opened in 1988, Corcoran was the
bloodiest prison in the bloodiest state penitentiary system in America. In a
series on the prison, the Los Angeles Times found that guards sanctioned,
even orchestrated, the rape of inmates by another inmate. In at least one
case, they beat inmates en masse, like a fraternity hazing gone wild. And
they shot 50 inmates, seven fatally.

Corcoran is not a nice place to work. It's where Charles Manson, Juan Corona
and 5,300 of the state's most dangerous felons live in crowded conditions.
But even within the repressed fury that is prison life everywhere, the
violence in Corcoran's early days was unparalleled.

Yet no one in power raised questions. No one professed to see a pattern,
until a guard and a lieutenant risked their jobs to come forward, the Times
published its expose, and the FBI started poking around.

Only then did Attorney General Dan Lungren and the Department of Corrections
launch separate inquiries, and they did nothing. Lungren's was limited to
one incident. The department's was hamstrung by Gov. Wilson's aide Del
Pierce, whose restrictions impeded interrogations. Given the option of
refusing to answer questions, most guards stayed silent.

The results: no criminal charges and one disciplinary action. And that was
against the whistle-blower who went to the FBI.

Since then, the FBI has issued eight indictments, and more may be coming.
Federal prosecutors are looking into the possible obstruction of justice.
And, as the five days of combative hearings last month showed, prison
administrators continue to profess ignorance of events.

There has been some progress under Corrections Director Cal Terhune. No
shots have been fired at Corcoran in three years.

And the legislature and Gov. Wilson strengthened the oversight process. The
three-tiered system includes ombudsmen, an internal affairs operation under
Corrections, and an independent Office of Inspector General, with its own
investigative staff.

The legislature should have placed all oversight functions under the
inspector general, to reduce potential conflicts of interest and political
influence. That's what the Legislative Analyst's Office recommended. But
legislators did nearly double the budget for oversight, to $6 million, which
is a good first step.

Oversight alone, without confronting the ingrained nature of prison
violence, may not be enough, however.

The problems at Corcoran occurred during explosive growth in the prison
system that a former corrections commissioner called ``unmanageable.'' In 15
years, the inmate population has tripled. The power of a fast-expanding
correctional union grew with it.

Rapid growth and crowding feed a siege mentality. They seed conditions for
abuse that an oversight process can detect but may not be able to prevent.
That, too, was one of the messages of the hearings on Corcoran. But a huge
pay raise for the guards' union surely was not the answer.

1997 - 1998 Mercury Center.

Checked-by: Don Beck