Inmates Do Time as Members of the Mainstream

It has no iron bars, uniforms or guard towers, but the aging hotel near Grand Avenue and 37th Street is a prison--the first of its kind in California.

The prison, which officially opened Thursday to patriotic music from a high school band and reassuring speeches from local politicians, is what the state Department of Corrections prefers to call a “restitution center.”

Authorized under legislation passed in Sacramento in 1984, the facility requires its inmates to find jobs within 90 days.

Vince Ladick, one of 105 inmates living in the hotel, said that when he first went looking for a job, “they gave me some strange looks. . . .

“A lot of them said that if something came up, they’d give me a call,” Ladick recalled Thursday. “But that phone never rang.”

Eventually, however, the phone did ring. It was someone offering a job at a warehouse; someone willing to take a chance on a convicted felon.

The job meant that Ladick could keep on living at the old hotel.

Unlike prisoners in conventional work furlough programs, who can be charged only for their room and board, the inmates at the center must pay about one-third of their wages to their victims, remit about one-third to the state for the cost of their incarceration and deposit most of the remaining third in a savings account for use upon their release.

Most meals are provided at the center and the inmates are allowed to keep some spending money.

Inmates are eligible for the program if they have not served a prior prison term during the last 10 years, have not been arrested for crimes involving drugs, violence or sex offenses and are serving sentences of 36 months or less.

The men at the center, all of whom requested transfer there, were selected from among about 1,500 inmates at prisons throughout the state. Most are serving time for white-collar crimes or for multiple drunk-driving convictions.

Ladick is finishing up a three-year term he received in San Diego County for driving under the influence of alcohol. A 34-year-old landscape architect who had never been to prison, he had been serving his sentence at a work camp in the Sierra Nevada before he was selected for the program. For him, restitution involves repaying the costs of his arrest and trial.

“I think that works out pretty fair,” he said. “And this is a lot better than being behind that fence. No fights. No weapons. Everyone getting along great. You feel more at home here.”

Gerry Miranda, 27, who is serving a two-year sentence for embezzlement, showed his room to some visitors. Right now it is rather austere, furnished with two state-issued iron beds, a pair of clothes chests and a couple of straight-back chairs. But Miranda already has put in a small television set and he and his roommate plan to add a few more amenities.

“It’s really pretty comfortable,” Miranda said. “We’ve got our own bathroom. It’s a lot nicer than (the state prison at) Tehachapi.”

Lorenzo Martinez, 42, a convicted embezzler who had been serving his time at the California Institution for Men at Chino, said the center is a much nicer place for weekend visits from his wife and children.

While most of the inmates ride buses to work, Martinez uses his own car to commute to a temporary computer programming job in Glendora.

“Everyone there knows what I did,” he said. “They don’t seem to mind.”

Like the other inmates, Martinez is not allowed to stray from his place of business during the day, except for a short trip for lunch, and he must return directly to the center after work.

Under terms of the program, the inmates are often required to provide community service on weekends, doing things like picking up trash at county beaches and parks.

“But this is OK,” Martinez said. “You’re free in your mind here, even though you are an inmate.”