Prison Officials in Vise Over Fees for Youthful Overseer

State prison officials, already beleaguered by record high penitentiary overcrowding, inmate violence and lawsuits, are caught now in a squeeze between the Legislature and a federal judge over fees charged by a young, relatively inexperienced attorney appointed to supervise court-ordered prison reforms.

One jaw of the vise trapping corrections officials is an order issued last October by U.S. District Judge Stanley A. Weigel in San Francisco appointing Robert Riggs, who at the time was Weigel’s 26-year-old law clerk, to oversee reforms in the tough lockup units at San Quentin and Folsom prisons. The order requires the state Department of Corrections to pay Riggs $75 an hour plus expenses for his services.

The state paid Riggs more than $85,000 in fees plus $9,000 in expenses for the 8 1/2 months of the fiscal year that ended June 30.

The other jaw of the vise is a provision in the 1985-86 state budget, adopted last month, that forbids Corrections Department officials from using any budget funds to pay the court-appointed monitor in the fiscal year that began July 1. The restriction was adopted by legislators angered by Riggs’ fee schedule and limited experience. One assemblyman, Larry Stirling (R-San Diego), called Riggs “a snot-nosed kid running a prison.”

But attorneys seeking penitentiary reforms charge that the dispute over the monitor is really intended to divert attention from the culpability of state officials for prison overcrowding and burgeoning violence.

State prison officials are said to be privately pleased by the criticism of Riggs, but they are at the same time fearful of a possible contempt citation if the fees are not paid. Corrections officials have been conferring with the Department of Finance and the controller’s office in search of a way to legally pay the prison monitor’s next monthly bill, which comes due in August.

Weigel won’t discuss Riggs’ appointment or say what action he will take if it becomes necessary to enforce his payment order.

Citation Possible

While some state officials see a contempt citation as a possibility, such an enforcement measure is unlikely, according to William G. Prahl, supervising deputy attorney general.

“It’s difficult to place a person in contempt if they’re on the horns of a legal dilemma,” Prahl said. The judge may instead seize state funds from a bank in order to pay Riggs unless a “more amicable” method is worked out, he said.

Prahl added, however, that the Legislature “certainly created an indefensible legal situation.”

The dilemma for state prison officials was created after legislators and the nonpartisan legislative analyst learned during hearings earlier in the year that the Department of Corrections was seeking an allocation of $200,000 to pay the monitor’s fees and expenses during the 1985-86 fiscal year.

Riggs maintains that the $200,000 figure was not his idea and that $150,000 probably would have been more than adequate.

Riggs and his supporters argue that San Francisco-area law firms would charge at least $75 an hour and possibly more for the services of an attorney with Riggs’ qualifications. But no one argues that Riggs himself would be paid anywhere near that amount by a firm at this stage in his career.

$75-a-Day Aide

Riggs, who works out of his own home, also argues that a portion of his fees go to overhead, such as the $75-a-day salary of an administrative assistant.

As prison monitor, or “special master,” Riggs inspects prison conditions affecting the 2,500 inmates in the lockup units at San Quentin and Folsom, oversees renovations and procedural changes ordered by the court and makes periodic reports to Weigel. Riggs also conducts hearings on such things as prisoners’ objections to their lockup status.

(The lockup units in the two prisons house inmates separated from the main population because they are considered troublesome or for their own protection.)

Riggs, now 27, graduated from Stanford Law School in 1982 with honors and then worked for two years as a law clerk under two federal judges before his appointment last fall as special master. At the time of his appointment, Riggs’ experience in the field of corrections consisted of a year serving as Weigel’s law clerk while the suit over reforms at the prisons was in the judge’s court.

“He is thoroughly familiar with the entire record in this action and with the law applicable to the issues presented,” said Weigel in his order appointing Riggs as monitor. “The court reposes special confidence in him and his capacity to serve reliably and effectively as monitor.”

But state legislators do not share the judge’s confidence.

“This guy is not a corrections professional,” complained Stirling, chairman of the Assembly Committee on Public Safety. “He just happens to be the judge’s buddy.”

Another Critic

Legislative Analyst William G. Hamm was equally critical during an appearance at a conference committee meeting on the state budget.

“I told the six conferees,” Hamm recalled, “that this was probably the most outrageous situation that I had seen in my 16 years in government. . . . I said that if I thought the legislators could get away with it, I would recommend that they eliminate the funding for this monitor until a more reasonable proposal could be put together.

“They thought they could and they did. As to whether they can in fact get away with it is another matter.”

Critics of the Riggs appointment also note that while he is paid $75 an hour, a nationally known prison authority is being paid a third less for work on a related case. Allen Breed, who is not a lawyer but is a veteran corrections expert with a national reputation as a prison monitor, is receiving $50 an hour plus expenses for his job of overseeing a Marin County Superior Court-ordered renovation of general population facilities at San Quentin.

But Riggs’ monitorship involves more prisoners than Breed’s, extends to two prisons rather than one, and may involve more complex issues.

No Hard Standards

Indeed, there seem to be no hard and fast standards for qualifications or payment levels for such a job.

For example, Bertram D. Janes is paid $50 an hour plus expenses for overseeing court-ordered reforms at Sacramento County Jail and, at the same time, $75 an hour plus expenses for monitoring reforms at the Butte County Jail. Before retiring, Janes sat for 10 years as a justice of the state Court of Appeal after serving as a Superior Court judge, a district attorney and a public defender.

In Texas, a veteran attorney and prison monitor appointed to oversee reform of the entire state prison system is receiving $105 an hour plus expenses.

Some objections to Riggs are based on his style rather than on his fee schedule and experience.

He has not endeared himself to state officials with his expectation that everyone stand when he enters a federal courtroom for a hearing and that he be addressed as “your honor.”

And at times Riggs can appear less than modest. In defending his appointment, he said:

“The judge was able to get somebody of exceptional talent to do this job and somebody (whose work) he knows well. . . . If you know anything about judges’ law clerks, they’re usually top flight in terms of their ability.”

First Report

Even critics of Riggs acknowledge that he works hard and that his first report to the court last month on the progress of reform is detailed and seems impartial and balanced.

Riggs’ supporters insist that the controversy over his fees and qualifications is a smoke screen to protect state officials who permitted San Quentin and Folsom to become so decrepit, dangerous and overcrowded that the courts were forced to intervene and order reforms.

“The problem,” said Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office, one of the firms involved in the reform litigation, “is the Legislature is using these kinds of monitor’s fees (to divert attention from) . . . the real millions of dollars that it’s costing them to come into compliance.”

Both Riggs and Breed are finding that progress on these problems is sometimes agonizingly slow.

Riggs’ court report on prison conditions concludes that corrections officials have been proceeding in “good faith” and notes improvements in conditions at both Folsom and San Quentin.

Severe Problems

But the report also lists many severe problems that remain unsolved, including lack of work for inmates, lack of cleanliness in some areas, vermin infestation and inadequate heating, ventilation and plumbing systems.

Riggs’ report expresses particular concern over treatment of about 10 mentally disturbed prisoners in a lockup unit at Folsom:

“In these facilities they molder in their cells amidst garbage and filth with minimal psychiatric treatment.”

Regarding the lack of renovation progress at San Quentin, Breed recently complained in a letter to Gregory Harding, deputy director for evaluation and court compliance in the Department of Corrections:

“As I commented in my last quarterly report to the court, these repeated construction delays have begun to erode my confidence in the ability of the defendants (the Department of Corrections) to meet their commitment to the court to upgrade conditions at San Quentin to a constitutional level.”

$20-Million Job

The renovations, when they are finally completed, are expected to cost more than $20 million at San Quentin alone and will probably last only an additional 10 years.

Meanwhile, at Folsom, more than 2,700 inmates are crammed into space designed for 1,600. Already this year there have been 132 inmate stabbings, compared to 108 for all of last year.