Proposal for Saugus Prison Unravels

Until it began to unravel bit by bit, the plan seemed almost ideal.

A private prison management firm would convert the Artesian Oaks juvenile detention camp in a rural area near Saugus into a prison for 100 state parole violators--inmates who otherwise would take up much needed space in one of Los Angeles County’s severely overcrowded jails.

But before it could obtain a permit to operate the state prison, the Board of Supervisors would require the firm to open a facility for 200 juveniles offenders. The new juvenile institution would make room for the 48 youths now housed at the Saugus camp, as well as free 152 beds at other county juvenile facilities for youths now forced to sleep on the floors.

Executives of the private firm, Management and Training Corp. of Ogden, Utah, announced that they would form a nonprofit corporation to run the juvenile facility and pointed to Lake View Medical Center, which went bankrupt and closed in March, as a likely place for its location.

Proposal Praised

Many county and state officials praised the plan, approved May 7 by the Board of Supervisors, as a step forward in the battle to solve the problem of where to put the increasing number of jail and prison inmates.

Supervisor Deane Dana called it a “ray of hope.” Board of Supervisors Chairman Pete Schabarum said the county’s jails, which are about 3,700 over capacity, currently house about 1,600 state parole violators because the state has no room in its facilities.

Rufus Morris of the state Department of Corrections said he hoped that the privately run prison for state parole violators, the first in Southern California, would be the forerunner of other similar facilities in Los Angeles County.

But despite the praise from public officials, the plan slowly fell apart. It failed because of what is known in the criminal justice system as the NIMBY (not in my backyard) syndrome.

“Everybody wants more prisons and jails, but in someone else’s neighborhood,” one public official said.

Residents Protest

Last month, strong opposition from Lake View Terrace residents led Management and Training to abandon its efforts to lease the hospital.

“It was a situation in which no rational feelings were going to prevail,” said Dean Dalby, the firm’s site project coordinator.

Then, last week, the firm announced that it also had given up the idea of operating the state parole prison.

The company’s executives said they had searched extensively for an appropriate location for the juvenile facility but found none.

“We’ve looked and looked all over Los Angeles County,” Dalby said. “We even looked in surrounding counties. We haven’t stopped looking.”

The Department of Corrections had been paying for the lease on the Artesian Oaks property, spokesman Jack Corey said.

“We couldn’t just go on doing that indefinitely,” he said.

The company’s announcement that it was abandoning the prison prompted Supervisor Ed Edelman to comment that perhaps the county had “overimposed” requirements for the permit.

County Probation Department chief Barry Nidorf termed the firm’s failure to set up operations at the defunct Lake View Medical Center “a loss” to the community.

“These are children whose crimes are not serious enough to have them be locked up,” he said.

Nidorf said the Lake View Terrace facility would have been very much like Rancho San Antonio boys’ home in Chatsworth.

At the outset, it appeared the company could easily obtain at least the permit to operate the state prison. The Department of Corrections had given the company high marks for its counseling, vocational training, job placement and other programs at its Job Corps centers.

Some Supported Plan

Initial community meetings, held almost a year ago, were cordial. Conditions such as requiring a fence around the Artesian Oaks site and setting up a community advisory board were agreed to by company officials. At one meeting, some residents of nearby Leona Valley voted to support the company’s application for a conditional-use permit to operate the adult facility.

However, as word of the project spread, so did opposition. Residents said they had lived peacefully with the Artesian Oaks camp for years and wanted the camp to remain. They said they strongly opposed having anything remotely resembling a state prison in their neighborhood and hired a bus at least three times to take protesters to Board of Supervisors meetings.

“Just because we’re a rural area, they think they can just dump anything here,” said Larry Rankin, a retired county firefighter who led the protest.

2,000 Signed Petition

He said people who moved to the remote area did so to get away from crime. Rankin and other residents gathered more than 2,000 signatures on petitions opposing the adult facility.

Department of Corrections’ Morris said prison was too strong a word when used in conjunction with the Artesian Oaks project.

“We call it a return-to-custody facility,” he said.

Parole violators there would have been carefully screened so that all 100 would have been nonviolent offenders, the kind of men who would benefit from the counseling and vocational training programs that Management and Training Corp. offers, Morris said.

Dalby said residents saw the facility as the forerunner to a larger prison.

“This just was not the case,” he said.

In Lake View Terrace, more than 300 angry homeowners attended the initial meeting organized by the Lake View Terrace Improvement Assn. to protest the juvenile facility.

“It’s a prison. Don’t let any of you be fooled,” resident Candice Elder said.

“We don’t want a juvenile hall,” said Betty Rockwell, another resident. “We desperately need a hospital.”

Finn Backs Residents

Los Angeles City Councilman Howard Finn, who represents Lake View Terrace, sided with residents and labeled the plan “ludicrous.”

After the firm’s announcement that it was abandoning the hospital project, Wanda Roaf, spokeswoman for the residents’ group, said residents were relieved.

Dalby said his company still is committed to offering its services in California.

“We always anticipate there will be some opposition,” he said. “It’s an emotional response to something people know very little about. People always fear the unknown.”

Nidorf said his department is “very, very interested” in having the firm provide space for juvenile offenders for the county. The company, which runs 11 Jobs Corps centers for the federal government in other states, provides “very realistic vocational training” and has a good track record of finding employment for its graduates, Nidorf said.

300 on Waiting List

He said about 1,400 juveniles who are wards of the county have been placed in institutions such as Rancho San Antonio, the Optimist Home for Boys and other privately operated facilities.

“Another 360 are sitting in juvenile hall waiting to be placed,” he said. “But we have nowhere to put them.”

The county’s juvenile halls have 1,393 beds and 1,720 juveniles, Nidorf said.