Last Chance for the Prison

The California Senate is moving toward a compromise on siting new state prisons in Los Angeles County. Despite rumblings of discontent from Gov. George Deukmejian, who insists on building only one prison and building it near downtown Los Angeles, the compromise plan deserves the support of the Legislature.

It is revealing that the compromise bill was drawn up by Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside). For two years Presley has been a loyal soldier in the governor’s campaign to build the Los Angeles County prison on land just south of the Civic Center. He now realizes that community opposition makes it unlikely that the prison will ever be built unless another prison is also proposed for a rural area in the northern part of the county.

Saying that “we are as close to a compromise as we will ever get,” Presley last week persuaded the Senate Appropriations Committee to unanimously approve a bill to construct a 1,450-bed penitentiary near downtown and a 2,200-bed facility in the high desert west of Lancaster. Environmental-impact reports would be required for both prisons, and neither one could be built without the other.

Apart from the details of the compromise, which is balanced and reasonable, the bill’s importance is that it would let the state comply with legislation requiring a prison site in Los Angeles County to be selected before two new prisons, near San Diego and Stockton, can be occupied by inmates. Those two facilities have been ready for months, while other state prisons are dangerously overcrowded. If the compromise works in the Legislature, only a refusal by the governor to compromise on a Los Angeles site would prolong this expensive and risky political stalemate. It’s time for the Legislature to force the issue by approving Presley’s prison compromise as overwhelmingly as possible.