Inmates look out from the windows of Madrone Hall, built in the 1950s, at the California Institution for Men in Chino.
The open windows, which have posed a security threat for decades, will soon be covered.
Posted on 07/23/2006 9:13:20 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
When Officer Manuel Gonzalez was stabbed to death Jan. 10, 2005, the inmate suspected in the killing was out of his cell – in violation of standing orders at the prison. Gonzalez, a veteran officer at the California Institution for Men in Chino, also wasn’t wearing his protective "stab-resistant" vest. That’s because it, and hundreds more like it, were in storage and had never been distributed.
The killing came a year and a half after prison laundry employee Karen Gossom claims she was sexually assaulted by her supervisor while at work.
An Internal Affairs investigation sustained the allegations, and Gossom settled her lawsuit against the department last year.
That occurred shortly before Kevin Pratt was incarcerated at the Chino prison on a parole violation, in January.
Pratt, who is HIV-positive, said in a letter to the Daily Bulletin that prison medical staff took several weeks to provide him with the potentially life-saving antiviral medications he’d been taking while on the outside.
Those three incidents represent just a few of the troubling stories coming out of the state prison in Chino.
In the decades since it opened, poor management, indifference and neglect have transformed CIM from a low-security sanctuary into one of the deadliest places in the state.
An investigation by the Daily Bulletin found that despite CIM’s status as a minimum-security institution, dangers abound for correctional staff, inmates and the public. Among them:
n CIM is one of California’s deadliest prisons. The 190 inmate deaths during a 10-year period at its minimum-security facility are more than all but a handful of other prisons – even though the minimum yard holds far fewer convicts than most institutions.
n The Reception Center-Central unit, when considered separately, is the most violent prison facility in the state. Officers are attacked with alarming frequency, and for inmates, the risk of assault is higher at Central than anywhere else in the prison system.
n Built decades ago, the crumbling prison is falling apart. Drinking water is polluted, asbestos exposure is a constant risk, and inmates easily fashion weapons out of materials ripped from the walls.
n Understaffing at CIM is worse than any other prison in the state. In fiscal year 2004-05, it had the most vacancies, the greatest overtime costs and the highest expenditures for temporary employees. It also was California’s most expensive prison.
A PUBLIC INTEREST
Poor conditions inside CIM may not automatically strike a chord with the public. What happens in prison, many of us feel, stays in prison.
But experts say that view is wrong.
"For the vast majority of inmates, prison is a temporary, not a final destination," said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a member of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons. "The experiences inmates have in prison – whether violent or redemptive – do not stay within prison walls, but spill over into the rest of society."
The same is true for staff at the prison, who work in a dangerous environment and often bring their stress home with them.
Led by new Warden Mike Poulos, officials have made dozens of improvements at CIM in recent months, trying to fix deficiencies identified by a series of internal investigations.
But no one expects the prison will ever become the bucolic facility its first administrators anticipated.
At its founding in 1941, CIM was radically different from California’s other two prisons. The least violent inmates in the state were handpicked for Chino, where they could live in dorm-style housing and work in the prison’s dairy.
CIM’s then-superintendent, Kenyon J. Scudder, believed inmates should be treated with more respect than at San Quentin and Folsom. He eschewed the title of "warden" and offered privileges to inmates, such as a picnic area for family visits and weekly movie exhibitions.
"I think the philosophy of our institution might be summed up in that we feel that all prisoners are people," Scudder said in a 1950 interview. "We must do everything that we can to try and adjust their thinking and attitudes so that they can again return to the community as useful citizens."
Today, the prison only vaguely resembles the low-security sanctuary Scudder envisioned. Razor wire and electric fences surround parts of the complex. The cannery and poultry farm are faded memories.
About 6,400 inmates – some serving time for crimes including murder and rape – are crammed into CIM. That’s more than twice the prison’s capacity, and the crowding contributes to incidents such as a riot involving more than 200 inmates in September.
Prisoners describe dangerous living conditions, including exposed electrical wiring, vermin infestation, broken plumbing and poor medical care.
That was the biggest concern for Pratt, the HIV inmate who said he couldn’t get his medication. "Have I broken the law? Yes," said Pratt, who has since been paroled. "But ... they don’t have the right to continuously put my health at risk."
Lt. Alex Hernandez, a prison spokesman, would not comment on Pratt’s allegation. But he said policy requires new inmates to receive any medications they need within 24 hours of their arrival at CIM.
The job is also dangerous for the prison’s officers. They work every day among criminals who wouldn’t think twice about attacking or even killing them.
"The stresses of being a correctional officer are extreme," said Martin Aroian, president of the local chapter of the officers union. "You don’t know what you’re being called to (when an alarm sounds). Sometimes you witness murders happening right in front of you."
Officers work in cramped quarters with obsolete equipment and an ever-expanding list of policies governing everything from transferring problem inmates to arranging photos for prison weddings.
The difficulties are exacerbated at Reception Center-Central, which holds the prison’s 1,200 most violent offenders.
"The conditions at Central are probably the worst conditions there are in the state," said Robin Adair, a former CIM inmate. "I’ve been to probably six or seven prisons in my life, and by far the consensus of everyone is that it’s the worst conditions of any prison in the system."
One review of Central that followed Gonzalez’s killing found "deplorable conditions" such as broken windows, gang graffiti and "accumulated filth;" a second review noted "total disarray" in Central’s maintenance areas. Experts say poor living conditions often lead to a greater threat of violence against both inmates and staff.
Data collected by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation shows Central’s problems go beyond its living conditions.
It’s also among the deadliest prison facilities in California.
VIOLENCE CENTRAL
Recent history at Central is stained by violence. In 1981, leaders of the murderous Aryan Brotherhood prison gang – described in federal indictments as an organization rivaling the Mafia in brutality and nationwide reach – met at the Chino prison to lay the groundwork for the gang’s future expansion.
In the late 1990s, federal prosecutors say, a correctional officer at Central became involved with a different white supremacist prison gang. The officer helped inmates smuggle drugs and assault other prisoners, according to court testimony.
It was also on a tier in Central where Officer Gonzalez was stabbed in 2005 – the first killing of an on-duty correctional officer in California since 1996.
For years, assaults in Central have outstripped statewide trends.
In 2003, inmates at Central assaulted officers and other inmates at a higher rate than any of California’s 32 other prisons. In 2004, the most recent year for which data is available, it was a close second to maximum-security Corcoran State Prison.
CIM officials use Central for their most dangerous inmates, because its design more closely resembles a maximum-security prison than its counterparts, reception centers East and West.
But that’s only part of the reason it became such a violent place, said Herb Higgins, a former correctional officer and now a city councilman in Norco.
During the past three decades, the philosophy in California’s prisons switched from a harsher, lock-’em-up mentality toward a more caring model, said Higgins, who worked at CIM from 1978 to 1985.
"The system promoted people that had that mind-set," he said.
People such as Lori Di Carlo, whom Higgins worked with for years. Di Carlo had risen to warden by the time Gonzalez was killed.
During her tenure, inmates at Central were often kept out of higher-security housing assignments and given second chances after getting into fights.
Those loosened restrictions, investigators later concluded, may have contributed to Gonzalez’s killing.
"They never truly ... grasped the custody aspect of locking an inmate up and keeping him locked up if he did something wrong," Higgins said.
The warden and her two top deputies were removed from their positions after Gonzalez’s death. Di Carlo could not be reached for comment.
Even at CIM’s minimum-security campus, inmates are at risk.
Between 1995 and 2005, 190 prisoners at the Minimum-Support Facility died during their incarceration, according to data from the state Department of Justice. The total is higher than that at all but three other state prisons.
That may be because the Chino inmates are among California’s sickest. Between 1998 and 2003, according to the Bureau of State Audits, CIM sent more prisoners to outside hospitals for inpatient care than all but two other men’s prisons – even though CIM is one of only four prisons with its own acute-care hospital.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHAOS
CIM’s difficulties are heightened by its complex organization. With four facilities – reception centers Central, East and West, and the Minimum-Support Facility – it runs like four prisons in one.
Like other prisons, its operations include more than just inmate housing. CIM runs a milk-processing facility, graphic arts and welding vocational programs, and educational programs that include GED, literacy and English as a second language.
Some of those programs are run by outside entities, including the Prison Industry Authority, a state-run organization that employed Gossom, the laundry worker who was sexually assaulted.
At 1,790 acres, CIM also is one of California’s largest prisons. By comparison, Avenal State Prison takes up 640 acres of land; Folsom occupies just 40.
In those prisons, the buildings are placed close together. At CIM, East and West are more than a mile apart.
"Our prison isn’t laid out like any in the state," said Aroian, the union president. "They had this huge piece of property, and they used it like a dartboard."
The size and complexity of the institution make the job harder for everyone working there, then-Warden Larry Witek wrote in 2000 in response to an audit conducted the previous year.
"I believe that the audit team would agree that (CIM) would be considered one of the more difficult prisons in the Department of Corrections to manage," Witek said.
Compounding the difficulties: Few of the prison’s buildings were designed for their current uses.
The minimum facility’s south dorm was built more than 60 years ago. "It’s maximum, but like 1940s maximum," said Lt. Tim Shirlock, until recently the prison spokesman.
Inmates live in the south dorm’s cells, but their doors are not locked.
In Reception Center-Central, the second facility built at CIM, none of the separate housing units are built the same way.
For example, cell doors in Madrone Hall are solid, while those in Sycamore Hall have bars.
These seemingly small differences can complicate the work for officers at the prison, Aroian said.
"With a solid cell door, I can’t cuff an inmate without opening the door," Aroian said. "I can’t cell-feed an inmate without opening the door. The whole reason for cell feeding is safety."
Reception Center-East was built in 1966 as a youth prison but never used for that purpose. CIM absorbed it in 1974.
It now houses more than 1,100 inmates, almost three times its intended capacity.
Those overcrowded conditions make it harder to run CIM’s education and job-training programs.
Officials in Sacramento want more programs in California’s prisons, because inmates who participate have better odds of staying out of trouble after they’re released.
But that’s next to impossible in places like CIM, said former department Secretary Jeanne Woodford.
"The (prisons) that we have in California were not designed to provide meaningful rehabilitative programs," she said. "They were designed for punishment."
THE HIGH COST OF INCARCERATION
CIM is California’s costliest prison. In fiscal year 2004-05, budget data shows, its operating expenses topped $219 million.
That year, its total number of authorized staff positions was 2,054, second to Corcoran State Prison. But the department holds open hundreds of jobs to save money; CIM’s 239 vacancies were the most in the state.
To make up for those vacancies, officers are frequently ordered to work double shifts. The 16-hour days can leave them exhausted, in turn jeopardizing security.
"I’m concerned with burnout of correctional staff and the amount of overtime they’re working," said Poulos, the warden. "We’re trying to do some things to alleviate some of that."
In April, Poulos received approval to accept about two dozen transfer officers from other prisons. But those transfers barely made up for the number of officers retiring or earning promotions.
Staff shortages trouble the entire state prison system. Most blame the situation on a decision in 2004 to temporarily shut down the correctional officer academy as a money-saving move.
But CIM’s shortfall exceeds other institutions’. The $15 million budgeted last year for overtime at the Chino prison was more than twice the statewide average. The same is true for the $4.7 million in temporary help.
The department also has been blasted for failing to assign new cadets to prisons where they were needed most.
In 2001, the Bureau of State Audits found, CIM needed 166 officers but received just five. By comparison, Wasco State Prison needed 39 officers and got 18.
Additionally, CIM staff as a whole have more seniority than those elsewhere, Aroian said. That’s because Chino is a more attractive place to work than other California prison towns.
With that older work force comes more officers on leave for illnesses or injuries.
"We’ve got a more senior staff. We’re working them more hours. They’re assaulted at a greater rate," Aroian said. "And this has been going on for years."
Not surprisingly, CIM spends more on workers’ compensation than any other state prison.
RIOT
The brawl at CIM’s Reception Center-East on Sept. 22 shows just how dangerous the prison can be.
What began as a dispute between black and Latino inmates erupted into a violent melee involving more than 200 prisoners. Most of the fighting was inside a day room, where extra beds are set up because of overcrowding.
For officers, this was no ordinary riot. Two of their own were trapped inside.
When inmates brawl, outnumbered officers typically leave the unit and return with greater numbers – and chemical agents such as tear gas.
But this time, one officer was still in the facility, and another had barricaded himself inside the building’s pharmacy.
Both had to be rescued.
"It was tense," said Lt. Shirlock, who was with Poulos as the warden juggled urgent radio calls from officers on the scene and an emergency conference call with department officials in Sacramento.
Poulos ordered in the prison’s emergency response team, who pulled the stranded officer out of the housing unit through a hatch in the roof.
Meanwhile, inmates had discovered the officer inside the pharmacy and were attempting to break down the door.
Poulos again sent in the emergency team. They fired flash-bang grenades and tear gas into the room before entering and extracting the officer.
The final toll on the housing unit included smashed windows, dismantled light fixtures and toilets ripped from walls. Several inmates were hospitalized.
It was a reminder that every day, CIM teeters on the edge of disaster.
Yet the prison’s mission goes on, no matter what happens.
"It’s a shame we have to do what we do," Aroian said. "Caging human beings is a deplorable thing. But I can’t imagine our society without these cages."
Inmates look out from the windows of Madrone Hall, built in the 1950s, at the California Institution for Men in Chino.
The open windows, which have posed a security threat for decades, will soon be covered.
Let's charge Mexico for the cost of incarcerating all those illegal alien offenders in these prisons. Then we would have plenty of money to fix the place up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.