CORONA NORCO : Troubles at Prison Bring a Reevaluation of Security : Originally a Private Club, Norco Facility Houses 3,400 Inmates but Has No Cells

Looking south over Lake Norconian, the green hills of the Santa Ana range sweep up from the citrus groves of northwestern Riverside County. To the north and west, the blue-gray San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains are capped with snow.

All around this cluster of elegant Spanish buildings and swaying palms, once known as the Norconian Club, stands a double ring of chain-link fences and barbed wire, guard towers and motion sensors. At the top of the hill in Norco is a medium-security state prison.

Under the brilliantly blue winter sky, the California Rehabilitation Center still seems more like a resort than a prison. And that is exactly the problem that corrections officials at the Norco facility are trying to solve, two dozen years after they began using the abandoned club facilities to house prisoners.

This home to 3,400 men and women in state custody doesn’t contain a single cell. Inmates live instead in military-style barracks that prison officials call dormitories. Inside the imposing ring of fences, the prisoners generally have enjoyed a fair amount of freedom. They can spend spare time leaning against a palm tree or lifting weights in the central yard.

Too Much Like Resort

After two brawls erupted at the prison in January, however, prison officials took another look at the rules governing life inside the fences. They decided that perhaps the California Rehabilitation Center was still a little too much like a resort.

“It was obvious to me the institution was running too open,” Bob Borg, the prison superintendent, said in a recent interview. “. . . We don’t want to be in the position again of wondering when 1,500 people in the yard will decide to raise hell.

“And,” he added, “we don’t want to be in the position of wondering if we’ll be ready to respond.”

Thus, officials at the California Rehabilitation Center say they may not lift the remnants of a security lock-down they imposed after the January fight, which stemmed from a few inmates arguing over seats to watch the Super Bowl in a dormitory television room.

The skirmish spread to other areas of the prison and prompted a five-day lock-down of the 2,800-inmate men’s section.

Another, much larger fracas between black and Latino inmates broke out in the prison yard just one day after the lock-down was lifted. Prison officials said the second brawl, which ended after about 10 minutes when guards fired 10 warning shots, was a carry-over from the previous Sunday’s dispute.

The second lock-down, under which virtually all inmates were confined to their dormitories except for taking meals in small, closely controlled groups, is still partially in effect.

Prison officials have reinstated visiting privileges and work, school and recreational programs, but they continue to limit prisoners’ mobility and to restrict their access to, and hence their numbers in, previously “open” areas, such as the central yard.

“Several things would have to be done before we get back to what we call a ‘new normal,’ ” Borg said. First, that ‘new normal’ must be defined.

“You take a step and you look for a reaction, then you take another step,” Borg said. “. . . It’s a matter of constant adjustment. The main thing we’re aiming at is the safety of the institution--the staff and the inmates.”

Prison Guidelines

General guidelines for prison rules are dictated by the Legislature and Department of Corrections, said Lt. George Morgan, the prison’s public information officer. Major rule changes within those guidelines require approval of the Corrections Department director in Sacramento, but minor changes can be made at the discretion of the institution’s superintendent.

Because California’s 12 state prisons have diverse physical layouts and inmate populations, Morgan said, each has evolved a different set of rules and procedures.

The rules governing inmates’ activities in the Norco prison are “tailored to the needs of this institution,” he said.

Central to those needs is the fact that the place was not intended to be a prison. Built in 1929 as a luxury resort, the club was used as a U.S. Navy hospital during World War II.

After the war, it was vacant until 1961, when the state opened the California Rehabilitation Center to house “civil addicts,” users of illegal drugs who opted to go there rather than face criminal penalties.

When the Legislature reduced many criminal sentences in 1977, the number of drug offenders who chose the seven-year program at Norco fell off sharply, Borg said. At the same time, prisons were becoming overcrowded, so the state started filling the beds with felons.

Today, fewer than 1,100 of the 3,400 inmates (of which about 600 are women, housed separately) are in the “civil addict” category, Borg said. “That just changes the whole tone of the place.”

No Strangers to Violence

Even before the type of prisoners began to change, however, the guards who worked there were no strangers to inmate violence. When Borg arrived in August, 1971, he recalled, “They told me, ‘you’re just in time for the Sept. 16 riot.’ ”

Prisoners’ holidays--such as Sept. 16, the anniversary of Mexico’s independence from Spain--often become violent occasions, Borg said. “It starts out with people just being disrespectful” of each other, he said.

Petty disagreements between a couple of inmates often snowball to large-scale disturbances as friends line up to defend each other, he said. “Before long, they’ve started beating on people who had nothing to do with what their (original) problem was.”

The same dynamic also turns the petty fights into battles between racial and ethnic groups--as in the recent brawls that began with a dispute over seats in the TV room.

“That ended up with a black group going against an Hispanic group,” Borg said.

The Norco prison has had a long history of conflicts between blacks and Latinos, including a 1983 incident that left one prisoner dead of stab wounds.

Most of Borg’s plans to avert future uprisings center on making the prison more prisonlike.

The California Rehabilitation Center still will have none of the high-security cellblocks usually associated with a state prison, but Borg said he hopes to build internal fences to divide the men’s dormitories into three clusters, so that each can be closed for stricter confinement.

Marks on a Map

Grease-pencil marks on a map of the prison, hanging in a conference room, show where officials hope to move or raise guard towers, or to add new ones. “It’s a pretty sound perimeter,” Borg said. “We just want to enhance it.”

A double wall of chain-link fencing, laced with motion sensors and topped with coils of barbed wire, already encircles the Norco prison.

“I make no bones about it,” Borg said. “This is a prison. . . . Because it’s got trees and grass and those sort of things, it makes it a more pleasant prison.”

More recent security measures, prompted at least in part by the January brawls, include the issuance of passes to inmates to make them more accountable for their whereabouts within the prison.

“All movement is now by pass. Either you are going to work or going to school or you have a pass,” Borg said. Prisoners “will be doing the same things, just on a (more) controlled basis.”

Change is most evident in the prison’s central yard where, before the January brawls, inmates congregated freely. Now, each prisoner is allowed in the yard only at specified times, so the size of the daily crowd is reduced.

“A lot of inmates like it, too,” Borg said. With fewer men in the area at one time, he explained, there is less competition for recreational equipment.

There are fewer inmates standing in line these days, also. “In prison,” Borg said, “nearly everything is done in lines--laundry, meals, the canteen.”

Reducing Time in Lines

By reducing the time prisoners must spend waiting in line, prison authorities hope to reduce tension and conflicts among them. Thus, inmates are coming to meals in smaller groups and bypassing the old cafeteria queue, picking up trays already filled with portions of food.

Laundry lines also have been eliminated, by collecting and distributing clothes and linens in the dormitories.

There may be other plans in the works for the Norco prison, but authorities were reluctant to reveal them in advance, for fear of stirring up protests.

“When you’ve got this many people in a place . . . with no bars and no granite,” Borg said, “you’ve got to minimize the chances for conflict.”