Desert Prison: Heat Helps Cool Things : Minimum-Security Mojave Facility Finds It Needs No Fences

The light-colored buildings nestled against a mountain in California’s barren Mojave Desert look like a secluded resort as they come into view along the lonely highway.

That is, until you see the tree-shaded sign: “Federal Prison Camp.”

There are no fences, gates or guard towers around this oasis-like facility 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

Journey closer and you’ll notice folks swimming, playing volleyball, lifting weights, pitching horseshoes and jogging along a mountainside trail.

Because desert temperatures sometimes hit 115 degrees during the summer and because of careful screening of prisoners, there are few, if any, escape attempts, said Luis Cortez, assistant superintendent of the facility.

“The heat is something of a calming effect. People just want to stay indoors and out of the heat,” Cortez said. “The main reason is the inducement to stay is greater than the temptation to leave.”

He said people who try to escape would only be transferred to a higher-security prison, and the inmates know it.

“The people who are here have been carefully screened and judged able to handle that type of a setting,” Cortez said. “These people are more mature, more responsible. . . . The atmosphere is freer, more open, pleasant.”

About a third of the 300 men at the minimum-security prison are white-collar criminals convicted of what Cortez, 49, calls “paper crimes--fraud, white-collar violations, income tax, embezzlements, counterfeiting, forgery, stocks and bonds.”

Another third have been sentenced for drug-related crimes, and the rest have been convicted of “everything else from burglary to extortion,” Cortez said. All are considered to be low security risks. Their median age of 36 is older than in most federal prisons, and many are near the end of their sentences.

Under a new federal law, some inmates serve time while appealing their convictions. Last January, Grant C. Affleck, sentenced to 10 years for defrauding hundreds of Utah residents out of millions of dollars, began his sentence while an appeal was pending in his case.

Affleck and other inmates sleep three or four to a room in the former Air Force radar station barracks, where swamp coolers are used for air conditioning.

Men at the camp dress in either civilian clothes or military khakis, can receive visitors five days a week and are eligible for home furloughs lasting up to seven days.

“They go and come back on their own,” Cortez said. “It’s something like 99.99% (who) come back.”

Most inmates are from the western states, with 45% coming from California. But just because the camp may look like a resort doesn’t mean that the inmates are there for a vacation.

Day Begins at 7:30 a.m.

“Everybody has a job. They’re expected to be on the job at 7:30 a.m.,” Cortez said. Work assignments include camp maintenance, food service, clerical jobs, staffing a two-engine fire station for the surrounding area and repairing federal vehicles.

They’re paid prison wages of 11 cents to $1.10 an hour. But, Cortez adds, it’s tax free and includes room and board, health care and medical care.

During their spare time prisoners play games, work in the hobby shop, take college classes, attend chapel services or jog up the mountain behind the camp to a radar tower. The camp routine is occasionally broken by test flights at nearby Edwards Air Force Base.

“We see the space shuttle coming up this way,” Cortez said, pointing to the clear sky west of the camp. “When the shuttle lands at Edwards, we can see it.”

Helped During B-1 Crash

Prisoners have also watched Saturn 5 rocket tests, and the camp’s fire crew was among the first to arrive at the site of a B-1 bomber that crashed last summer.

The camp is one of seven stand-alone minimum-security prisons run by the federal Bureau of Prisons. Thirteen others are operated alongside medium-security federal prisons, said Kathy Morse, a federal prisons official in Washington.

About 12% of the 33,133 prisoners in federal custody are in minimum-security facilities, Morse said. Most of them are nonviolent offenders.

It costs less to house inmates in low-security prisons, she said, about $20 to $22 a day per prisoner. The cost per prisoner at the maximum-security federal prison in Marion, Ill., is more than $60 a day, she said.