New State Prison on Otay Mesa: Ready or Not?

To an unschooled observer, the institution hardly looks habitable--even after you find your way on the unpaved roadway past the countless mounds of dirt, open trenches, strewn pipes, building materials, idle equipment, concrete-slab foundations and the hundreds of construction workers scurrying at a breakneck pace.

At the end of that maze, the northwest quadrant of the new Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility--the part that prison officials insist they can open as soon as politicians get out of their way--still has a distinctly unfinished look about it.

But appearances, Supt. John Ratelle said, can be deceiving. “It’s ready to open as soon as we get a few things done in the buildings,” said Ratelle, who is no unschooled observer.

Whenever it does open--and some prison employees and politicians are raising questions about its readiness--the new prison near the U.S.-Mexico border on Otay Mesa will be the first all-new men’s penitentiary to open in California in more than two decades. Major annexes were built next to existing facilities at Vacaville in 1984 and Tehachapi in 1985. The man at the helm of those institutions during their expansions was Ratelle, now the warden for the yet-to-open Otay Mesa prison.

The opening of the new prison in San Diego County, however, is more than a question of construction schedules. It has become the focus of a lingering political stalemate between Senate Democratic leaders and Gov. George Deukmejian.

Four years ago, the Legislature wrote into law restrictions about the sequence of state prison construction, saying that a site had to be selected for a new prison in Los Angeles County before new ones could open elsewhere. But the Legislature broke off its extended session in September deadlocked over where a new Los Angeles County prison should be located.

Two weeks ago, the first phase of the $141-million Donovan facility had a target opening date of Nov. 24. Today, there is no target date, Ratelle said.

The “hardest thing I ever had to do,” he said, was tell a group of correctional officers in training for the opening that “I had to send them back.” Ratelle startled the guards with the message during an afternoon training session last month.

Many of the men and women, moved to San Diego area at state expense, had been on their new jobs for only four days. Some who were counting on promotions and salary increases, starting last week, are now being told that it is unclear when their new jobs will start and promotions will become effective.

Despite criticism, the state Department of Corrections has no plausible explanation for the snafu of moving 43 guards to San Diego, then suddenly telling them to go back to the institutions they had just left. They say the blame lies entirely with the legislative stalemate they had hoped would be resolved in time for the prison to open on schedule.

Key provisions of the prison siting bills linking the Los Angeles prison controversy to the opening of the new Otay Mesa prison were written by Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista), who represents the southern part of San Diego County. Although Peace sided with Deukmejian in his fight with the Legislature, he has recently toured the new prison and reached the conclusion that it is not safe, secure or ready to open.

“If it wasn’t for politics, nobody in his right mind would consider occupying that facility (now),” Peace said last week.

Peace vowed that he will do all in his power to see that corrections officials don’t rush the opening. To allow the facility to be opened anytime soon would endanger his constituents, Peace said.

He said his major concerns include the temporary fences and guard towers around the first five housing units slated to open. But Ratelle said Thursday that the double 14-foot, chain-link fence--topped with “razor wire”--that surrounds the 500-cell first phase is exactly the same kind that will eventually encircle the entire 150-acre, 2,200-cell facility.

“Really, the perimeter . . . is more secure than it would be if the facility was completely open,” Ratelle said. “We have five guard towers around this small facility, instead of 12 around the whole facility.”

Ratelle also said that the only difference between two temporary towers, which will eventually be moved as later phases of the facility are completed, and the permanent ones is the purely cosmetic aluminum siding that encases the steep stairways to the top.

Admittedly, the clutter of construction activity and equipment around the prison could provide numerous hiding places and even some vehicles for an escapee. But “he’s never going to get over that fence,” Ratelle said.

Still, there is no such thing as an escape-proof prison, said Bill Fletcher, executive assistant to the warden at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown San Diego, reputedly one of the most secure facilities in the nation.

“When you have prisoners and they have 24 hours a day trying to figure a way to get out, . . . there will be some that get away,” said Fletcher. His institution has had only 12 escapees--all of whom were eventually recaptured--since it opened in 1974.

State prison officials also boast a good, and rapidly declining, escape rate in their facilities. There were only 37 escapes from state prisons last year, less than one for every 1,000 inmates, said Robert Gore, assistant director of the Department of Corrections.

“It’s been steadily declining over the years,” Gore said.

Generally, rank-and-file prison workers side with their bosses in wanting to open the Otay Mesa prison as soon as possible. Their biggest worry, they say, is the danger associated with overcrowding in a prison system that houses nearly 58,000 people in facilities designed for less than 33,000.

But some of the guards and supervisors who will be working at the facility, who did not want to be identified, say concerns about the perimeter fences are legitimate. “That’s the most important thing,” said one correctional officer.

Prison workers and union leaders who will represent them also say that door locks and control panels should be thoroughly tested, and the housing units should be meticulously cleaned, before the first inmates are moved in.

“And, you don’t want a lot of construction workers around. They like to wear Levi’s and could get confused with the prison population,” said a supervisor, who has returned to his old Northern California institution after being transferred to the Otay Mesa prison last month.

On Friday, the control panel in one of the housing units was on blocks. Hundreds of wires that will operate the electronic door locks and the public address system were exposed in open floor and wall panels, yet to be connected.

But Ratelle said everything could be in working order within days. And, he said, the only construction workers in the open part of the facility will be those working on “punch list items,” correcting malfunctions.

When the facility opens, Ratelle said, the clerical workers and administrators will have their offices in a warehouse that will eventually be used to store bedding and food. Currently, 55 prison employees who were not transferred back are working out of an office in a shopping center just south of Chula Vista.

There will be no initial effort at all, Ratelle said, to initiate the ambitious “prison industries” program, touted by former Otay Mesa Supt. Reginald Pulley as the most extensive ever undertaken in California.

Eventually, prison inmates will operate a regional laundry to supply several Southern California institutions, a textile mill, a factory for grinding eyeglass lenses and the state’s second license-plate factory (the other is at Folsom Prison east of Sacramento).

But now, prison officials say half of the first inmates would be idle. The others would busy themselves raking the dirt yards next to their housing units, “picking up the little rocks” and preparing to plant grass.

“In this climate, it doesn’t take long for grass to grow,” Ratelle said.

Ratelle said his staff, about 55% of them veteran correctional officers, will be more experienced that those that opened the Vacaville and Tehachapi expansions. The first 50 prisoners will be transfers from minimum-security units who will be used as kitchen workers and housed separately from the more dangerous “Level Threes” who will populate most of the medium-security facility, he said.

To “set the tone,” Ratelle has said, he will bring in about 100 inmates a week--beginning with a carefully screened group with a history of good behavior.

Initially, all the prisoners will be housed one to a cell, but the cells are all being equipped with two bunks in anticipation that Otay Mesa, like all other prisons in the state system, will eventually have to house the men two to a cell. It “would be a pipe dream,” Ratelle said, not to suspect that Otay Mesa--built for 2,200--will not someday house nearly 4,000 prisoners.

Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego) said the Department of Corrections’ plan for bringing in staff and prisoners in phases seems well thought out and wise.

“The prison is not the walls and towers,” he said. “It’s the people. . . . It’s the staff that runs the prison.”

Ratelle said that, if the political stalemate is somehow resolved by the Legislature, he and his staff are “gung-ho to open” with just a little lead time.

“I’d like to have two weeks, but I could do it in one,” he said.