Prisoners of a Dilemma : Penitentiaries: Officials are being asked to decide whether to grant compassionate releases to inmates dying of AIDS. Corrections system is also beefing up facilities to provide care.

Freda Kubas wants nothing more than to take her son, who is dying of AIDS, home to the mountains so he can spend his last days in peace.

Ordinarily, that wouldn’t seem like much to ask. But Kubas’ son, Stanley Young Jr., is doing 14 years in state prison for robbery and burglary.

Department of Corrections officials denied a “compassionate release” request on behalf of the 28-year-old convict this year and are now reconsidering the case. As doctors re-examine the inmate and corrections officials pore over his file, Young’s mother has been sitting in vigil on the steps of the Capitol building.

Young’s case illustrates an agonizing and delicate problem for California state prison officials: What to do with the growing number of inmates who are dying of AIDS.

“It is one of the toughest calls that any administrator has to make,” said James Gomez, director of state corrections, who reviews and rules on all requests for compassionate release. “Clearly when you’re looking at releasing someone back to society and you’re looking at all the ramifications, it’s real tough. . . . You look at individuals that you’re making these judgments on, individuals who have continually offended against society--and yet you don’t want to see anyone die.”

Superior Court judges make the final decision on releasing dying inmates on grounds of compassion, but the jurists almost always follow the recommendations of Gomez.

All such cases do not involve inmates with AIDS, but those with the fatal disease make up the majority of convicts in California’s newly opened hospice and support care housing unit at the prison medical center at Vacaville.

The opening of the 10-bed hospice, as well as the 28-bed support care unit and beefed-up medical staffing, was put on a fast track last fall when a legislative report lambasted the Department of Corrections for poor care of HIV-infected prisoners and others at Vacaville.

The Nov. 18, 1992, report by the staff of the Committee on Public Safety, chaired by Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco), made 25 recommendations for improvements, including streamlining the compassionate release process. Gomez insisted that the process was working properly, but agreed to put into effect almost all the other recommendations to improve treatment.

Even with the improvements, however, correctional officials have a formidable task on their hands in dealing with AIDS among inmates. Many inmates are intravenous drug users when they get to prison and continue to find a way to use narcotics and share needles while inside. In addition, prisoners commonly share contaminated needles while tattooing one another. Unprotected homosexual activity among inmates is common.

In April, 940 inmates out of a prison population of more than 113,000 were known to be infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, an infection rate at least twice that of the population at large. But this could be the tip of the iceberg. It is difficult to know the extent of AIDS behind prison walls because involuntary testing of inmates is prohibited by law, as it is for the general population. The last spot-check tests were run in 1988 and found that 2.5% of incoming male inmates and 3% of females were HIV-positive. The test, now five years out of date, did not look into the infection rate for inmates in custody.

Only inmates who volunteer for tests or become become ill receive blood exams. HIV-positive convicts are housed in prisons throughout the state, but as the disease progresses, they are transferred to the medical facility at Vacaville and housed in cellblocks with newly installed clinics.

If these inmates remain in prison long enough and if the disease progresses, they are transferred to the support care unit and finally to the adjacent hospice at Vacaville.

When a doctor finds that a prisoner has six months or less to live, the case is referred to Gomez for possible compassionate release.

Gomez must make these difficult decisions with increasing frequency. Last year, he received 41 requests for compassionate release. Of these, 22 were AIDS patients. Gomez approved 25 requests; 14 were AIDS patients.

This year’s request rate is well above that of 1992. By mid-March, the latest figures available, Gomez had received 23 compassionate release requests, 17 of which were AIDS cases. He granted 10 of the total; seven AIDS cases.

Asked why all the requests are not granted, Gomez said that prisoners thought to be near death, especially AIDS patients, often experience temporary recoveries.

Corrections officials point to two car thieves who were recently released because they were dying of AIDS, but each recovered sufficiently to steal another car.

In addition, some dying convicts have committed crimes so heinous or repulsive that officials feel that the public would not stand for their release.

On a recent day at the Vacaville prison medical center, a 32-year-old inmate lay in bed in a support care unit cell adjacent to the hospice. The man should have been in the hospice, but he does not want to admit he is dying. His bones poked against the skin of his chest and a prison-made tattoo on his withered forearm read, “Born to Die.” An inmate from the prison pastoral support program sat in a chair next to the bed, keeping a death vigil.

He was denied a compassionate release because of the nature of his crime. He was sentenced to five years in prison for introducing a minor to a drug. But that sentence was plea-bargained down from 18 counts of sexually molesting a girl under 16 while knowing that he had AIDS.

Down the hall in a small hospice ward, another man in his early 30s lay on a bed, staring at the ceiling. He could remember his name, but not his age or why he was there. Once again, an inmate from the pastoral program sat by the dying man’s side.

This prisoner, too, had been denied a compassionate release. He is serving a life sentence for second-degree murder for slitting the throat of his lover’s husband, repeatedly stabbing the man and beating him on the head with a board.

In a day room across the hall, Stanley Young, the prisoner whose mother has been campaigning for his release, sat on an easy chair with his feet propped on a wheelchair. On some days Young can make his way from his bed to his wheelchair without help. On other days, he is too sick to get out of bed.

Young is 6 feet, 1 inch tall and once weighed about 195 pounds. AIDS has taken him down to 135 pounds.

Although his sentence involves armed robbery, he says he has never really been violent. “I’ve never hurt nobody,” he said.

But Young’s life has been full of problems. He was in trouble as a youth over thefts. He joined the Navy but was discharged for psychiatric reasons.

At age 19, he was sentenced to state prison for burglary.

After his release he became addicted to heroin.

In 1989, in order to get drug money, Young broke into a home he thought was unoccupied. But an elderly couple were at home and when the man pulled a gun, Young grabbed it and the weapon went off. No one was hurt, but after Young was arrested minutes later as he fled from the house, he was charged with armed robbery as well as burglary.

He accepted a plea bargain of 14 years, 4 months.

And somewhere along the line, Young had contracted AIDS.

Last January, a prison doctor gave him six months to live and submitted a request for compassionate release.

The request was denied on the grounds that Young was ambulatory and had used a gun in his offense, according to his mother.

Young’s condition continued to deteriorate and, last month, a prison doctor resubmitted the request for release. But after he was treated for pneumocystis at a local hospital, a second prison doctor pronounced a “miracle” improvement in Young’s condition.

Since then, the prisoner’s condition has worsened and he was taken to UC Davis Medical Center for further examination.

In the meantime, Freda Kubas has gathered signatures in support of her son’s release from virtually every adult--including the deputy sheriff--of her hometown of Glennville in the Greenhorn Mountains north of Bakersfield.

“I’d like to bring him home and hold him and be there and tell him I love him before his time is up,” Kubas said. “I want to make some good food for him and entice him to eat it and take him for a walk in the country, even if I have to use a wheelchair.

“My son did not hurt anyone,” she said. “He did not receive a life sentence--but he’s serving one.”