Prison Sites in L.A. County

Mayor Tom Bradley in his letter (Nov. 10), “Prison Sites in Los Angeles,” attempts to justify his suggestion of the Saugus area as the site for the Legislature-mandated state prison for Los Angeles County. However, he disregards the most basic and fundamental reason why the prison must be built in Los Angeles itself. He states correctly that there are prisons in Los Angeles, but the mayor does not bother to tell us that none of them are state prisons, they are all city and county institutions.

The Legislature has directed that since Los Angeles County “contributes” 38% of the inmates to the state prison system it must carry its fair share of the load of housing these people. Since virtually all of that 38% derives from the Los Angeles Basin itself, attempting to shunt the prison to the Santa Clarita or Antelope Valley is simply an attempt to defy the Legislature.

The Antelope Valley already has both a state (Tehachapi) and a federal (Boron) prison and both this valley and the Santa Clarita Valley have multiple county correctional institutions of various levels. Since we do not produce a high number of felons, it is not fair that we house a high number of them.

And to bring up a related subject, since we are not the beneficiaries of the employment benefits of your large industries, it is not fair that the City of Los Angeles try to make us the repository of the toxic wastes these industries produce.

In addition to fairness, Mayor Bradley frequently talks about environmental protection, yet at the same time he continues to support a water policy that has damaged and destroyed large portions of the Owens Valley--an environmental disaster of legendary proportions--all again for the benefit of Los Angeles.

The outlying areas around the city ask nothing more than fairness and intellectual honesty in dealing with us. Our valleys are rapidly filling with people moving away from the problems of the Los Angeles Basin and are building new lives for ourselves and our children. We resent the efforts to inflict those same problems back upon us.

JOHN J. MANNING

Lancaster