President to Dedicate New Jail Addition

President Bush will visit the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho, a Los Angeles County Jail in Castaic, today to dedicate a 2,800-inmate addition.

Bush, touring California to attend Republican fund-raisers and deliver speeches on drugs and crime, is expected to arrive by helicopter shortly before 10 a.m. He will tour the maximum-security prison, formally known as the North County Correctional Facility, and during a ribbon-cutting ceremony he will deliver a speech.

For the Pitchess Honor Rancho, the President’s high-profile visit comes after more than a year of setbacks and false starts.

The new facility had been scheduled to begin accepting prisoners last spring, but the opening was delayed when technicians discovered that security doors would not shut and toilets would not flush. It turned out that technical glitches were slowing down the computerized security system. Soil and particles in the jail’s well water were clogging the pipes.

In December, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors authorized an additional $2.7 million to complete the maximum-security prison, which had originally been budgeted at $131 million. At the time, engineers said part of the problem was the sheer complexity of the project.

The new facility has been described by the Sheriff’s Department as a high-tech, state-of-the-art prison. It includes a master control room complete with 28 television monitors hooked up to 128 cameras in the jail’s five main buildings. The jail will house inmates charged with murder, rape and other felony offenses while they await trial or sentencing.

The facility covers 680,000 square feet and includes a textile factory, print shop and bakery that will produce 25,000 loaves of bread for jail cafeterias.

Last year also marked the first escape from the 1,600-inmate North Facility, another portion of the Honor Rancho, which designers had said was virtually escape-proof when it opened in 1987.

But last July 30, Rodolfo Corona, an inmate described by deputies as a “human fly,” slipped past guards and scaled a fence lined with razor wire. Corona, 22, had been awaiting a preliminary hearing on robbery and kidnaping charges. He is still at large.

A few days after Corona fled, another inmate--Kirk Anderson, 27--escaped from the Honor Rancho’s East Facility. Anderson--held on burglary, weapons and narcotics charges--was recaptured Aug. 11.