PRISON STRUGGLES TO BALANCE PUNISHMENT, REHABILITATION

El RENO -- It's not Club Fed. But it's not the harsh forced labor of the
Soviet Gulag, either.

Officials at the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, which
celebrated its 70th anniversary this year, say they try to strike a balance
at the medium-security prison.

The institution, which houses nearly 1,600 men, offers programs to educate
and prepare inmates for release that are at the forefront of corrections.
Foremost, though, it's a prison.

"We keep them behind the fence. That's our job," Warden T.C. "Charlie"
Peterson said.

But, "You can't throw inmates in a place like this, throw them to the
wolves, and think they'll make it," he said. "You have to provide viable
programs."

A prison dairy sells products, including nearly 10,000 gallons of milk a
week, to 23 other federal institutions. A farm handles 1,300 acres of
wheat, alfalfa and sorghum and 443 head of cattle for beef production.

The compound also has one of the largest metal-fabrication operations
within the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and supplies steel desks, beds and other
products to prisons and federal agencies, including the military.

In September, about 4 million pounds of steel made its way through the
factory, said J.W. Campbell, associate warden of industries. Earnings last
year were $530,000.

Last year, beef and dairy sales brought in about $2.7 million.

The industries are self-sustaining. "It saves the taxpayers dollars"
because otherwise the federal prison system would have to contract out to
private companies, Peterson said.

Inmates can make between 12 cents and 40 cents an hour. In many cases, half
of that goes to pay fines and restitution. Last year, inmates paid $221,622
toward fines and restitution, prison spokesman Barry Edwards said.

Educational opportunities run from the remedial: English as a second
language, high school; to the vocational: welding, building maintenance and
even denture making.

There are recreational activities: weightlifting, softball, television and
other things.

"It's a safer place for inmates and staff to work, and if we're doing our
jobs right they're going to be better prepared when they go to the
streets," Peterson said.

But, again, it's not Club Fed.

In each 8-foot-by-12-foot cell, three inmates live. A pair of bunks line
one wall and a single bed the other. There's one open toilet in each cell.
One window faces outside, usually with a view of a high fence topped with
razor wire. A smaller window allows guards to scrutinize the inside of a
cell from the hallway.

All inmates must work and all follow guards' orders or end up in special
housing, privileges revoked. Groups of prisoners waiting in line for lunch
part as officials walk through.

In the lunch hall, there's self-inflicted segregation whites on one side,
Hispanics in the middle and blacks on the other side.

There's occasional violence. Last year, there was just over one
inmate-on-inmate assault each month, three of which included a weapon.

"Those are indicators that we're running a safe institution," Peterson said.

But just a month ago, an inmate was found dead with a head wound. The death
is being investigated as a homicide.

"We will eventually get the perpetrator," Peterson said.

The prison officially opened in 1934 as the Southwestern Reformatory,
housing inmates ages 18 to 26. The first escapes happened before the
official opening, as did the first inmate homicide.

The farm began in 1934, and today is one of only two such federal prison
programs. UNICOR, the industrial program, followed shortly after and really
got rolling with the production of brooms in the 1940s.

The early 1970s were marked with riots and a climax in violence with the
murder of correctional officer Donald Reis at the prison chapel Feb. 28, 1975.

From 1985 to 1995, just about every type of prisoner mafiosi, killers and
thieves passed through El Reno as the prison served as a center for
transfer inmates within the federal prison system. The year before the
operation was transferred to a center in Oklahoma City, the El Reno
institution processed 56,000 inmates.

The current population is primarily people who committed drug crimes or
other crimes to support a drug habit, Peterson said.

"I haven't seen a good car thief in 10 years," he said. "The impact of the
drug culture has just had a huge impact."

The prison still takes some of the more difficult cases, Peterson said,
because it is known in the industry as a "can-do facility."

"The general public has no clue what goes on out here at an institution
this large," Peterson said. "This operation is one of the more complex and
dynamic in the Bureau of Prisons."