Prison Furlough Plan Canceled

State corrections officials said Wednesday they will cancel a plan to bring a work furlough program for 80 male parolees into a now-closed Inglewood motel because of opposition from the City Council.

Council members had issued a resolution strongly condemning the move.The council urged the state to find another location and noted that Inglewood already has two other halfway houses near the proposed site at 4026 Century Blvd.

After all five councilmen condemned the project at Tuesday’s meeting, Department of Corrections spokesman Nal Pedrosian said: “You’ve made yourself very clear without a shadow of a doubt.”

Jerry Dimaggio, regional administrator for the Department of Corrections, said Wednesday that the plan was dropped. “Without the local accord, we’re not going to go forward.” He criticized the city for opposing the program, saying that most of the people in the proposed program would be Inglewood residents.

The owner of the site, Irene Christopher, accused the councilmen of shirking their duty.

“Some members of this council may wish to take the politically expedient easy way out in dealing with our community’s need to reintroduce rehabilitated offenders into society,” she said at the meeting. “ . . . It would be great if doing what was right and what was popular were the same thing, but the decisions faced by an elected official are not easy.”