Men at Work : Norco’s Investment in Inmate Crews Pays Off

The roar of two chain saws cuts through the lingering fog along a Norco roadside as a crew of workmen begins its day.

Seven men, wearing dark-blue dungarees, heavy boots and fluorescent orange vests over their light-blue shirts, use the chain saws plus electric trimmers and a pole saw to attack the tree branches, brush and weeds encroaching on the roadway.

Across the street, a uniformed state officer rocks back on his heels, quietly observing the scene. These workers also are prisoners.

They are inmates from the California Rehabilitation Center, the medium-security state prison in Norco. Crews such as theirs have been working on the city’s streets, parks and horse trails for the better part of 10 years, said Ray O’Dell, director of parks and recreation.

“I couldn’t afford to have a park program without the CRC crews,” said John Donlevy, Norco city manager. The city pays to transport and supervise the inmates, he explained, but the state Department of Corrections pays their wages, which range from $1.38 to $2.44 per day.

2 Crews Used Daily

By using two prisoner work crews--each composed of seven to 15 inmates--daily to maintain parks, streets and trails, Norco will save about half a million dollars this year alone, Donlevy estimated.

And city officials have been so pleased with the program that they are considering allowing a crew of state employees and prisoners to reopen a city fire station closed in the aftermath of Proposition 13, the 1978 property-tax-cutting measure.

Most City Council members in adjacent Corona, however, do not share their neighbors’ enthusiasm for inmate workers. Corona had been using prison work crews for a little more than three years when the council voted in December to immediately suspend the use of laborers from two nearby state prisons.

And at its most recent meeting, the council again voted to prohibit the use of prisoners to maintain city parks.

“We want it to be a parks and recreation department, not a parks and rehabilitation department,” said Corona Councilman William Franklin, whose council campaign last year included a pledge to get the prisoners out of Corona’s parks.

‘Many People Afraid’

“I had (heard) many complaints,” he said in an interview, “and many people were afraid of the situation.”

At his first council meeting after taking office, Franklin proposed that the crews be eliminated.

“The people don’t want to go near the parks, and certainly don’t want to use them, with the prisoners there,” he maintains.

Prison officials insist that residents have little to fear because inmates are screened and selected carefully before they are allowed out of prison to work. “I don’t need impetuous people out on those crews,” said Bob Borg, superintendent of the California Rehabilitation Center.

Inmates convicted of violent crimes, sex offenses or automobile theft and those who have had disciplinary problems in prison are excluded from the crews, Borg said. Many of the prisoners selected, he said, are due to released within a few months.

But Franklin, a captain in the Anaheim Police Department, argues that anyone who has been sent to state prison poses a danger. “The criminal justice system is severely overloaded,” he said. “. . . It takes an unreasonable amount of criminality on the part of suspects to get them committed to state prison.”

Few Escapes

In recent years, two inmates have escaped from work crews in Corona and Norco. Neither committed other crimes before they were captured, said Capt. Arnold St. Peter, community resources manager for the Norco prison.

One escapee was captured in Mexico a few days after he had left a crew working in Norco, Borg said. The other was caught hitchhiking just a few hours after he walked away from his work crew at Cresta Verdeh Park in Corona.

Following the second escape, Corona city and prison officials met twice with several dozen Cresta Verde residents to answer their questions and concerns, said Ken Redlin, Corona director of parks and recreation.

Those discussions aside, his department received only three complaints about the inmates in the 37 months they worked in city parks, Redlin said.

Two callers complained that prisoners could see into their homes, he said, and the third, a corrections officer at the California Rehabilitation Center, was concerned that prisoners would discover that he lived a couple of blocks from a Corona city park.

Jim Wheaton, Corona city manager, said only one resident complained to him about prisoners’ working in the parks.

Crews’ Work Praised

Prisoners’ tasks in the Corona parks included mowing and pruning, cleaning restrooms and picking up litter, Wheaton said. The crews also helped prepare a municipal swimming pool for use each spring, trimmed street trees and painted the civic center auditorium.

“They did just a superb job,” Wheaton said. Another crew of workers from the California Institution for Women (in southwest San Bernardino County) had been working in Butterfield Stage Trail Park for six months before the council halted the inmate-work program.

The Corona Parks Department asked for six more full-time maintenance employees in its budget request for next year, which the council probably will consider next month. Five of those new employees would be assigned to jobs previously done by prisoners, Wheaton said.

“It’s going to cost a few more dollars,” he said. “If the council wants to maintain the parks . . . , they are going to give us the funds to maintain them.” Without the prison crews, Corona is “slipping behind in our (park) maintenance,” Wheaton said. “The loss of all of those hands slows down our maintenance efforts, no doubt about that.”

And as summer draws nearer, Redlin said, the parks will see more use, more trash and more vandalism.

‘Sense of Accomplishment’

Uncut weeds were evident last week around Cresta Verde Park, where a small group of young mothers from the adjacent neighborhood talked while watching their children play. All four said they favored using prisoners to maintain the park as long as they were carefully selected and supervised.

The inmates “probably need to have something that gives them a sense of accomplishment,” said Kathy Winston. “I don’t think there’s much of that living inside a prison.”

Kay Campbell, who was pushing a stroller through the hilltop park in northeast Corona, agreed. “They should be given a chance to help serve the community in some capacity,” she said. “We’re supposed to be forgiving, so if they’re low-risk and if they’re supervised, they should be given a chance.”

Winston added, “If you’re just going to talk about dollars and cents, it’s a good idea, too.”

Several neighbors interviewed near Cresta Verde Park said they, too, support the idea of using prisoners to maintain the playground as long as they are sufficiently supervised.

‘Prisoner Is a Prisoner’

Corona Councilman S. R. Al Lopez, who with Franklin and two members of the Corona Parks and Recreation Commission served on a committee to review the use of prisoner work crews, said that although few people had contacted him to complain about the prisoners, he believes most area residents “feel relieved that they’re not around.”

“A lot of people are very much concerned . . . that they can use the parks freely without the concern that there are inmates there,” Lopez said. “. . . A prisoner is a prisoner. He’s obviously done something against someone, and the public does not know who’s who.”

Lopez said he would rather see the city spend more money to build a professional park-maintenance staff. “We’ll just have to make some adjustments in the budget. That’s the name of the game.”

Corona Councilman Dick Deininger cast the sole dissenting vote on both council measures against using prisoners. “I think it was one of the best programs we had,” he said. “It helped balance the budget . . . (and) it helped rehabilitate the prisoners.”

Norco Adds Crews

The California Rehabilitation Center’s outside work program has not been hurt by the Corona council’s action, because Norco city officials were eager to take the additional crew, said Lt. George Morgan, public information officer for the prison.

“It’s ironic that Norco jumps to take the people we have rejected,” said David Palmatier, chairman of the Corona Parks and Recreation Commission. “I don’t like to use an old phrase--throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

If Corona City Council members believed the prisoners constituted a danger, he said, they should have tried to improve or increase their supervision rather than simply eliminating a program the parks and recreation director recently called “an unqualified success.”

This month’s City Council vote, Palmatier said, precludes not only the use of state prisoners, but also the use of a program offered by the Riverside County sheriff that provides workers from the county jail.

Those inmates often are first-time minor offenders who serve their sentences only on weekends, Palmatier said. “They might be there as a user in our park Monday through Friday and assigned to the work detail on the weekend,” he said.

New Crews Proposed

Corona will miss “the saving of tax dollars, especially in a time of budget constraints,” Palmatier predicted.

The Corona work crew “was a very positive thing,” agreed Supt. Borg, whose prison also sends about 60 inmates to work for the state Department of Forestry.

Still more inmates soon may be heading outside the California Rehabilitation Center, on three new crews proposed for use by the state Department of Transportation and Riverside County, Borg said.

And Norco city officials are working on their proposal to move the prison’s fire battalion--consisting of both prisoners and state employees--just outside the facilty’s fences to the city’s vacant Corydon Avenue fire station.

That would provide quicker response times to residential areas on the city’s west side and valuable aid to Norco firefighters, City Manager Donlevy said.

Reopening of Fire Station

Although it would cost Norco about $400,000 annually to reopen, staff and equip the station on its own, Donlevy said, the city of 20,000 residents probably would pay nothing to base the prison battalion there.

City firefighters, whose ranks were slashed in the same wave of budget cuts that closed the station, oppose the move, but most City Council members have indicated at least tentative support for the idea.

Moving the prison’s emergency equipment outside the prison’s perimeter would make it less susceptible to damage in prison uprisings, Borg said. And providing inmate labor for fire protection or for public works is good for public relations, he added.

“It saves the city a whole lot of money,” Borg said, “so it makes for good neighbors.”

The primary benefit of the work program, Borg said, is that inmates “get to get out of the institution. That in itself is a big incentive” for good behavior. For many prisoners each day worked shortens their sentences by a day.

Inmates Favor Program

“It’s better for me to come out and work,” said George Molina, lead member of the crew trimming trees, weeds and brush along River Road in Norco last week. “I like it better. My time goes faster.”

Molina has been on the crew for about nine months, he said, while serving time for a probation violation. He expects to be released from prison in three months.

“I enjoy working outside,” he said. “. . . I know my friends in there”--he gestured uphill toward the prison--”would to like to come out and work.”

A good recommendation from the City of Norco, Molina said, will probably help him get a job as a construction worker once he is free.

Working on the outside crews helps inmates develop the good work habits they need to stay out of prison, Lt. Morgan said. “It teaches them to get up in the morning, brush their teeth and get to work.”

Kenneth Bonner, a parole violator working on Molina’s crew, said his old job as a heavy equipment operator is waiting for him when he is released next month. The prison work program, he said, “is pretty good. It gets you out of the institution . . . and it keeps me in tune with working. . . .

“You come out, you see people on the streets. You get tired of seeing guys all the time. Sometimes you see a girl drive by, or somebody who ain’t in blue clothes.”

Many Norco residents said they like to see the men in blue clothes in their neighborhoods.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing them out here a little more often to see that horse trail cleaned up,” said Ruth Greenwood. “I just don’t spend much time being scared . . . . If they’re going to lean on the handles out there, I don’t see much point to it, but they seem to work hard.”