First Inmates to Take Up Residence at New Prision

About 20 minutes--on foot--from Mexico’s hills and the possible freedom they hold, and two miles from the mountain for which it was named, the state’s newest prison will begin filling with inmates today, six years after its construction was authorized by the Legislature.

The Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility at Rock Mountain, better known locally as the state prison in Otay Mesa, eventually will have cells for 2,200 prisoners and will probably one day hold nearly 4,000 convicted criminals.

The medium-security lockup, built at a cost to taxpayers of $154 million, will house some of the toughest cons the state’s criminal justice system can turn out. But not the toughest.

Especially not today, when 100 hand-picked, best-behavior inmates are scheduled to arrive beginning at 9 a.m. Of the 100, 75 will be minimum-security inmates chosen because they possess particular skills--kitchen, plumbing, electrical--in demand at the Otay Mesa prison. The 25 others will be medium-security prisoners who have proven themselves to be model inmates, said Lt. Sandra O’Neill, a prison spokeswoman.

250 Due Each Week

But that trend will end soon, as 250 inmates of all sizes, shapes and demeanors pour into the prison each week for the next two months, with a gap in late August when construction on the second half of the prison is scheduled to be completed.

Robert Gore, an assistant director of the state Corrections Department, said the typical medium-security prison holds inmates with sentences longer than three years who have significant criminal records and have shown few signs of “social stability.” Otay’s inmates will also include those who have attempted escape and have been disciplined for their behavior in prison, Gore said.

While few, if any, murderers will be sentenced directly to Otay Mesa, there is no limit to the severity of the crimes for which prisoners might find their way to the penitentiary. Convicted criminals are given a point score corresponding to the length of their sentences, then points are deducted for time served as well as for a variety of personal characteristics that, experts believe, predict how the inmates will behave.

As their score descends, so does their placement, from maximum security, to medium, low minimum and minimum.

“You can come in as a murderer and earn your way down to minimum security,” Gore said.

The prisoners who arrive at Otay Mesa today will be greeted by gleaming buildings, freshly paved roads and a brown, boulder-strewn landscape barren of vegetation. The prison sits on about 150 acres between two small canyons, a dozen miles from the coast and a short distance from the Brown Field airport.

Hills of Mexico Beckon

On a clear day, the dusty hills of Mexico beckon from the south, as if placed there to inspire escape attempts. On a clearer day, inmates will actually be able to see Rock Mountain, the 669-foot bump in the earth that legislators chose as the official name for the prison--to avoid staining the image of the nearby communities. The other part of the prison’s name was taken from Richard J. Donovan, the late assemblyman and judge who was in the Legislature in the mid-1960s when a San Diego prison was first discussed.

Ringing the prison are 12 gun towers and two 14-foot-high fences topped with razor-edged wire. Inside are four independent units, each with a group of five 100-cell buildings. Each unit will be served by its own dining room, health clinic and recreation yard. Outside the main prison boundaries, but also fenced, will be two 96-bed dormitories for minimum-security inmates who will perform odd jobs around the institution. The eight remaining beds that complete the prison’s 2,200-inmate design are in the firehouse.

The prison’s four quadrants are divided by two roads that intersect at the center of the facility. Along these roads are the buildings housing most of the prison industry operations that will eventually employ as many as 840 inmates, who will be paid as much as 90 cents an hour and receive a day off their sentences for every day worked.

The seven primary industries will be a laundry, a bakery, a vehicle repair shop, a computer data entry office, an optical lens lab, a license plate factory and a textile mill. There also will be inmate jobs in administration and maintenance and in a warehouse supporting the industry efforts, said Harriet Kiyan, activation manager for the Prison Industry Authority, which will manage the factories.

Plates to End Delays

Kiyan said the license plate factory will be the state’s first since the Folsom Prison factory opened in 1947. The San Diego facility is expected to help end delays in license plate production caused by frequent lockdowns at Folsom, a violence-ridden maximum-security prison near Sacramento.

The textile mill, which will weave raw cotton into material for sheets, pillow cases and towels, among other items, will be the first such mill on the West Coast, officials say.

By law, the industries can sell their products only to tax-supported government agencies, Kiyan said. She said the purpose of the industries is not to provide specific vocational training for inmates but rather to teach them to handle simple responsibility.

“The biggest job skill they get from working for us is just getting up in the morning and going to work every day,” Kiyan said. “That’s something most of them have never done before. In all honesty, there’s not a huge demand for license-plate makers out in the free world. But just the job habits someone is going to acquire by showing up and making license plates every day is something they can use when they get out.”

When inmates are released on parole from Otay Mesa, they will be turned over to relatives or given air fare to their parole destination and transportation to the airport, O’Neill said.

The Otay Mesa prison is part of the state’s ambitious prison construction plan, which before it is complete will see 26,000 beds added at a cost of $2.2 billion, doubling California’s prison capacity.

So far, the state has completed major additions to institutions in Vacaville, Folsom, Tehachapi, Jamestown, Susanville and San Luis Obispo. A new prison opened in Avenal earlier this year and others are under construction in Blythe, Crescent City and Corcoran.

Opening Was Delayed

Today’s opening of the Otay Mesa prison and a women’s prison in Stockton were delayed several months by legislation that forbade the use of those two facilities until after the Legislature and Gov. George Deukmejian had named at least one site for a prison in Los Angeles County.

That so-called “linkage language” was inserted into the law several years ago as a way to pressure legislators from Los Angeles County, which accounts for almost 40% of the state’s inmates but has no prison within its boundaries.

After a stalemate lasting nearly two years, including several months after the Otay Mesa and Stockton prisons were ready to receive inmates, the Legislature last week named two locations for Los Angeles County prisons. The governor signed the bill, removing the last obstacle blocking the opening of the two nearly completed prisons.