Few Oppose ‘Industries’ at Prison Hearing

Plans to use 345 inmates to make sheets, towels and eyeglasses at the proposed state prison in Otay Mesa met with mild opposition Wednesday from private companies that face competition from those prison industries.

Members of the Prison Industry Board, which held hearings at the Shelter Island Marina Inn to determine what impact the prison industries would have on private firms, appeared surprised at the light turnout from businessmen, some of whom would be precluded from selling items to the prison because of the inmates’ labor.

Gov. George Deukmejian and the Prison Industry Authority want to expand prison industries as a way to train and put to work up to 42% of the system’s inmates. Another incentive is to supply goods the prison system now buys on the open market.

The textile mill and optical lab are scheduled to begin operations in 1987 in the Otay Mesa prison, which is expected to open late next year. Also planned is a prison bakery and vehicle repair shop, activities that would employ 245 inmates. The industry board, which oversees the prison authority’s activities, will hold a hearing on those proposals today.

The optical lab at Otay Mesa will produce 75,000 pairs of eyeglasses a year and fill prescriptions for about one-quarter of the state’s Medi-Cal patients, prison officials hope. The textile mill would produce fabric from raw cotton, supplying bedding and towels to state agencies.

Dave Craig, director of the Prison Industry Authority, said the proposed prison textile mill would be the largest in the country. He said it would create 285 jobs--carding the cotton, spinning, weaving and dyeing the fabric--and give inmates marketable skills after they are released.

Ronald Freese, president of Heard Optical Co., which is based in Long Beach, said the prison optical lab “will certainly jeopardize our industry.” He said that 75 optical labs have gone out of business in California since 1975.

“We have unfair competition now,” Freese said. “We have foreign companies that are selling products under cost. Now the state wants to come and take more of the available prescriptions away. We just don’t feel the government should be competing with private industry.”

Freese said he also is afraid the proposed lab may be expanded.

“They (the prison authority) are claiming they will take 2% of private industry jobs,” he said. “Our concern is once the ball starts rolling, who knows where it will stop.”

Robert Gold, president of Ragold Corp., which supplies sheets and towels to the California State Prison system, argued that the trade taught in the textiles would be useless since there are no mills in California producing fabric from raw cotton. Such mills, he said, are in the Northeast and the Southeast.

“You’re training inmates for jobs that do not exist,” Gold said. “There isn’t one place west of the Rockies where a worker could get a job.”

However, Craig said the mill would produce the kind of work experience that could be adapted to California’s clothing industry.

“It’s rehabilitation,” he said. “They’re going to learn how to use equipment and how to work hard.” But, he said jokingly, “I wouldn’t mind if once they get out of prison they go back East.”

According to Craig, the mill would lose $366,430 its first year of operation, but should make money by the fifth year. In addition, the mill should save the prison an estimated $912,000 a year because it would mean the state could forgo those costs in other training programs.

Both Freese and Gold warned that the quality of the products produced by the prisoners would be low because, with rapid turnover, workers would not have a chance to develop the skills of a journeyman.

“Once these people learn the jobs, they’re going to be paroled and gone,” said Gold.

But Robert Hanna, a Prison Industry Board member, said, “Mr. Gold, we’ve got a captive audience. We’ve got all the time in the world.”