Parole Models : Crime prevention: Ex-convicts warn errant youths about the horrors of prison.

They were convicted murderers, rapists, robbers, drug dealers, former gang members with prison tattoos flaring over muscles, graduates of San Quentin and Folsom with advanced degrees in survival.

They sat in a crowded conference room at the Lancaster parole office and used profane eloquence to conduct a guided tour of hell.

The seven Antelope Valley parolees kicked off a new program Thursday aimed at helping teen-agers caught up in the area’s fast-growing gang, drug and crime problem. The event was organized by state parole agent J.R. Hamilton and Billy Pricer, director of Operation Gangwatch, a local anti-gang organization.

Titled “Wise Talk,” it resembles the program portrayed in the 1978 documentary “Scared Straight,” in which New Jersey inmates brought juvenile offenders to prison and harangued them about the horrors awaiting them there.

The 13 teen-agers who took part Thursday were referred to Operation Gangwatch counselors by family members, school officials and law enforcement agencies. They included boys and girls with drug and family problems and members of the high desert’s multiethnic mosaic of Latino, white and black gangs.

“You’re smiling, you think it’s funny,” Larry Echols told a 15-year-old dressed in “cholo” sweat shirt and low-slung pants, who slouched and played with a cigarette lighter.

“Hearing the rapes at night,” said Echols, 39, who spent three years in the Tehachapi State Prison for manslaughter. “You hear that all night. People yelling, ‘Help, help, po-lice.’ Hell, the po-lice ain’t comin’. They’re up there laughing: ‘Ah, they got another one.’ ”

Next to Echols, Gil Garza wore for the occasion the street gang look he rejected in favor of a construction job after serving 9 1/2 years in and out of prison: khaki pants, checkered shirt, a red bandanna over slitted eyes.

“You’d be the first one I’d go after,” Garza said, pointing at a slender, long-haired boy who grimaced as Garza described in choice street terms what Garza would do to him if they were inmates.

The parolees talked for two hours with growing fervor, exorcising ghosts, alternately belaboring and beseeching their audience. They conjured vivid details of despair: a correctional officer stomping a photograph of an inmate’s mother--”and you can’t do nothin’,” Garza said; inmates padding their torsos with newspaper to protect themselves from the shanks used in racial combat between prison gangs; inmates crying underneath the covers at night.

The fear lingers, said Ernie Anesta, 42, a powerfully built American Indian who said he had been an alcoholic for 25 years and specialized in robbing “dope fiends.”

“I’m still scared to walk down the street,” he said, people leaning forward to hear him. “I’m so used to being in the penitentiary, it’s easier for me inside.”

Abdul Askia recalled his girlfriend’s mother, who said she hated him, laughing when he telephoned to tell her he had received a sentence of 42 years to life for a murder. He said the 16 years he served at Folsom Prison were predestined when he started hanging out with the wrong crowd.

“It’s easy to end up in prison,” he said. “You might be driving drunk and run somebody over. You might shoot somebody in the leg, and they bleed to death. You might burglarize somebody, and they die of a heart attack. You are not in control.”

Askia and the others singled out three youths who they said looked as if they were prime candidates to end up behind bars soon, among them the slouched youth playing with the cigarette lighter.

“Look at the youngster,” Askia said. “Playin’ with fire.”

Nonetheless, the session was relatively restrained, as Pricer and Hamilton had planned. The parolees stayed in their chairs; there were no jaw-to-jaw confrontations, no youths reduced to tears. The young people resisted invitations to make comments, although one girl demanded to know why Garza was wearing gang attire if he was opposed to gangs.

“I don’t wear this stuff in the street,” he responded. “I wore it on purpose, for the effect. Would you listen to me if I came dressed like a dork?”

And several of the teen-agers said afterward that they had heard the message before, but never so graphically or from people with this kind of experience.

“They got the point across,” one girl said. She said she narrowly avoided a stay in Sylmar Juvenile Hall two days ago after running away from home. As a result of hearing a woman parolee talk about her experiences, she said: “I’m gonna become a nun! I’m not going to do anything.”

Mark, 15, was more reserved. Asked where he was from, his eyes lit up and he said “South Side Malditos,” which he described as a Lancaster-based gang. But Mark said he benefited from the discussion.

“I’d come back,” he said.

The parolees shook hands all around, visibly drained and happy. They said they want to refine the program to elicit more dialogue with the audience.

“They were nervous,” Anesta said. He extended a brawny arm to show that it was shaking. “We were nervous.”

Pricer and Hamilton said they hope to hold weekly sessions and bring the program to students who present disciplinary problems at local schools, if the schools can handle the group’s strong language. They also said they may have parolees dress in prison uniforms and wear arm and leg shackles for maximum dramatic effect.

No matter how hard the kids try, Pricer said, “they are never going to get it out of their mind.”