A Prison in the Neighborhood?

Gov. George Deukmejian wants a state prison in Los Angeles County, and with good reason: 34% of the state’s male convicts come from this area. Most of those inmates are assigned to prisons in Northern California, although all are processed through Chino, a minimum-security prison and reception center 37 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

The distances impose a hardship on families and friends who want to visit. Transportation costs the state 11 cents per mile per inmate to Chino and beyond.

A medium-security prison and reception center, on a site under consideration near downtown Los Angeles, would ease both of those burdens. If all goes as planned, the state will build a 1,750-bed high-rise urban prison, at an estimated cost of $115 million, in the vicinity of 12th Street and Santa Fe Avenue--an industrial area a few miles from the Civic Center and one mile away from the closest residential neighborhoods.

Criminals are rarely sought after as neighbors, however, and the downtown site, like every other site mentioned by the Department of Corrections, has attracted political opposition.

The closest homes to the proposed state prison are in Boyle Heights--a community in East Los Angeles, part of which is represented by state Assemblywoman Gloria Molina (D-Los Angeles). She has argued that already more than 11,000 prisoners are housed within four miles of the new site--an unfair social burden, she believes, on one part of town. A bill that she has proposed would exclude the prison site near downtown because of the proximity to two jails--Men’s Cental and the Sybil Brand Institute for Women.

You can understand Molina’s concern, but we think that the value of having a prison near both courtrooms and the families of prisoners is the overriding concern.

Political opposition, however, is not the only stumbling block that could derail the new prison. State officials are near agreement on purchasing an eight-acre site for the prison from the Crown Coach Corp., but 30 more acres are needed. An environmental-impact report must be completed. The process could take years.

It has taken three years already. In 1982 Deukmejian and the California Legislature approved a bill that required the state Department of Corrections to build a prison in Los Angeles County. Planning has been delayed for more than two years.

Meanwhile, the state desperately needs more prisons. Currently, 145,500 inmates are crowded into facilities filled at 151% of the intended capacity.

A new prison in Los Angeles County would relieve some of that overcrowding, lessen state transportation expenses and make it easier for friends and families to visit inmates. Those reasons make a strong case for building the new prison on the site near downtown Los Angeles.