BAR PRIZES: A new report shows how...

BAR PRIZES: A new report shows how the county’s five jails spent the past year’s profits from commissary goods sold to inmates. Included: $51,000 for inmates’ newspapers. Another $13,586 for video rentals. And another $12,276 was for prizes (candy, popcorn) for winners of jailhouse tournaments, like basketball or dominoes. . . . Says Assistant Sheriff Jerry Krans: “It keeps these guys from sitting around thinking about ways to get out or carving up the place, and makes our guys’ jobs easier.”

SCAM CITY: State prosecutors meeting in Washington this week warn that dishonest telemarketers are bilking the public out of $100 billion each year. Newport Beach remains a capital of boiler-room operations. . . . Police there say many companies merely use the city’s tony address for mail drops. The city’s affluent residents are also the chief targets of such cons. Says Detective Robert A. Hardy: “There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t get a complaint.”

HAIL THE CHIEF: The Capistrano Unified School District is in the midst of groundbreaking for five new elementary schools. A special one today: at the future Clarence Lobo Elementary School in San Clemente. It’s the first public elementary in the state to be named after an American Indian leader. . . . Lobo, chief of the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians from 1946 until his death in 1985 at age 72, proudly traced his ancestry in San Juan Capistrano to at least 1826. Several of his relatives plan to speak at today’s ceremony.

WE LOVE NEW YORK? The New York City Ballet filled an average of 75% of the seats at its recent engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center--down from an 85% average when it was here in 1990. But center officials are pleased with the numbers: 28,445 paid attendance this time, just 17,500 in 1990. . . . “We did a lot more ballet for a lot more people,” says the center’s Richard T. Bryant. The ballet gave 13 performances this time, and just seven in 1990.