TAKING BACK THE PRISONS

The nation can no longer tolerate prisons operated as the fiefdoms of
wardens who do what they wish with little oversight from state
authorities. The states will need more direct control - and clear
reform plans - if they intend to address recidivism, the AIDS and
hepatitis epidemics, and court orders mandating humane treatment for
inmates, especially the mentally ill. Courts in several states have
tired of waiting for compliance and appointed special masters who push
prisons toward reform. California, which has a special master at its
Pelican Bay prison, could see its whole system come under court
control unless Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger makes swifter progress
toward reforms ordered by the courts starting nearly a decade ago.

The takeover threat came last month from Judge Thelton Henderson, who
made his reputation on prison issues by putting a stop to the abuse of
prisoners that prevailed in the 1990's at Pelican Bay in Northern
California. Judge Henderson installed the special master there, and
mentally ill patients who once were abused and placed in solitary
confinement are now referred to a mental health unit. Shootings and
acts of official violence are handled promptly by an investigatory
panel. Brutality by guards has declined.

The court believes that reform at the prison level has gone as far as
it can go and that the state's notoriously weak prison authority must
be remade. A recent report by a panel led by George Deukmejian, former
governor of California, described that authority as sprawling, out of
touch and powerless. It argued for replacing it with a simpler agency
responsible to a secretary of corrections and overseen by a civilian
review board. The judge also said, in essence, that the prison guards'
union had seized control of the disciplinary process and had too much
influence in corrections department operations.

The union, however, did not seize power at gunpoint. It bought it the
old-fashioned way - with hefty contributions to politicians. It then
expanded into the administrative vacuum left by a prison authority
tangled up in its own bureaucracy. In addition to keeping the union in
check, the governor and Legislature should restructure the state
prison authority, perhaps along the lines suggested by the Deukmejian
panel, so that the state can reform the prisons statewide, not one at
a time. That's what Judge Henderson was saying by threatening to take
over. It is advice that other states should follow.