Unlock the Lockup

A standoff between two political leaders, both alternately rigid and intractable, is holding up work on a state prison in Los Angeles County.If Gov. George Deukmejian and Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) are the reasonable men whom they see themselves to be, they will stop shouting and start building.

Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), sponsor of the original prison bill, is suggesting a compromise, part of which calls for two new prisons in Los Angeles County--one downtown and one in a rural area. There is no question of the eventual need for two new prisons; with 56,800 inmates, the system is operating at 171% of designed capacity.

Presley’s proposal is in some ways as political as the standoff. The new prison now is scheduled to be built on the Crown Coach site, two miles south-east of the Civic Center. What he offers to the Democrats who represent Boyle Heights and other neighborhoods near the site is an assurance that the burden of a prison close to home would be shared by some other area in the county likely to be represented by Republicans.

Presley’s proposal also calls for an environmental impact report, but would exempt the state from considering alternatives to the Crown Coach property as part of the evaluation. The state had tried to save time by conducting an environmental study, which typically takes one year, after itbought the property. That attempt to short-circuit the environmental process helped create the standoff after opponents made an issue of the property’s being near a toxic-waste storage facility. One such shortcut of the environmental process has left the state holding the bag, because property that it bought for another prison is directly under a military-aircraft traffic pattern--something that an environmental report surely would have turned up. Presley’s proposal would prevent that from happening a second time, particularly if there are significant problems.

The state should not abandon the Crown Coach site. Its proximity to the the Los Angeles Men’s Central Jail, to courts and to freeways makes the location entirely suitable for a prison reception center, where inmates would be classified before being sent to prisons to serve time.

Two prisons, of course, cannot be built for the price of one. A prison-construction bond issue on the Nov. 4 ballot would authorize money for only one facility, but, if the Presley proposal were accepted, the state could move funds around or seek another bond issue to pay for a second.

But unless the stalemate is broken no prison can be built in Los Angeles at any price. The argument has dragged on for four years. Presley’s proposalat least would let reasonable political leaders get moving on a prison for Los Angeles County.