Soft Side of Hard Time : Penal system: Lancaster Prison’s recreational program is viewed by some as crucial to an inmate’s rehabilitation; others simply see it as overkill.

Under the gaze of a stately black bird and the rays of a sun hot enough to singe Lucifer, the rites of summer proceed without interruption.

Handballs crash off walls, and sweaty palms swat them back again. A soccer ball floats through the air above the cacophony on the ground below.

It could be a scene from summer camp; the players could be children, the chaperons seeking refuge in the shade could be counselors.

But it’s nothing like that. This is the B yard of the state prison at Lancaster, a maximum--and medium-security facility that houses more than 4,000 inmates, 25% of them lifers. Chaperons carry firearms, not first-aid kits.

It is a Tuesday, and those no yet placed in full-time prison vocations have congregated in a spacious courtyard that includes a sand pit for lifting weights, soccer nets, picnic tables and a concrete basketball court.

“This ain’t a country club,” an inmate sternly reminds a visitor. “Don’t say it’s no country club.”

No, it’s not a country club. Some country clubs don’t let certain folks in; Lancaster Prison rarely lets any folks out.

Robert Davis is not one of your fire-and-brimstone coaches. He is affable and soft-spoken, and uses his words economically.

“It’s just like any other job,” said Davis, Lancaster Prison’s recreational coordinator. “You have your nervousness at the beginning, but it’s really just a people business. You have to build a rapport.”

Davis, 5 feet 7 with a sculpted physique, has built a career in recreation. After receiving a physical education degree form Miami (Ohio) in 1980, he worked in Indiana’s YMCA system. He joined the California Department of Corrections in 1988, and lives in Antelope Valley with his wife and two children.

For nine months, his “people business’ has been involved in organizing weekend recreational activities for inmates that range from basketball and volleyball to pinochle and Scrabble.

Davis, who has been at the prison for two-and-a-half years, posts signup sheets in the cell blocks, awaits response, then supervises activities in four separate prison yards with his fellow recreational officers. Inmates--usually more than 50 in each yard--participate in morning and afternoon sessions.

A 10-week softball league, conducted under American Softball Assn. rules, just concluded. Certificates of participation were awarded, as were victory plaques the inmates themselves had made. Occasionally, well-behaved participants received sodas.

“This is a job that I enjoy,” Davis said. “We are promoting life skills they can take out of prison with them. Competition can be healthy. We rarely have problems.”

Dean Crenshaw, administrative assistant of Warden Ernie Roe, said the program--which has been in existence since the prison’s 1992 opening--merits what Crenshaw estimates is an annual cost of $11.25 per inmate for staff and equipment. California spends an average of $20,760 per annum to house an inmate, according to the Department of Corrections.

The CDC’s operations manual states: “Each warden shall provide a recreation and physical education program that will maximize inmate participation under safe, secure and healthful conditions.”

The purpose is to “foster better interpersonal relationships, develop socially acceptable attitudes and behavior, develop beneficial skills,” and “provide opportunities and incentives for self-expression and self-realization through a variety of activities that will provide diversion and relaxation.”

Crenshaw believes Lancaster’s enterprise does that and more.

“The program keeps them out of trouble, from committing crimes in prison,” Crenshaw said. “Just because you are in prison doesn’t mean you stop committing crimes.

Designed for 2,200 inmates, Lancaster--one of 28 state prisons but the only one in L.A. County--is at double its capacity. Over-populating a prison is like trying to pop popcorn inside a balloon can’t expand any more, and it pops. Violently.

“Overcrowding puts additional stress and strain on all your programs, and makes things more dangerous for everyone,” Crenshaw said. “The recreation activities at least get inmates out of their cells for a little while.”

Tip Kendall, the CDC’s assistant director of communications, added-that organized recreation is an essential management tool in today’s prison climate.

“Given the overcrowding we have in California, we cannot keep inmates locked up all day,” Kendall said. “any time you have a prison setting, you have to find programs to keep them occupied. If you don’t they tend to get involved in things counter to good behavior.”

To some, programs such as these run counter to good sense. A definite difference in philosophy exists between those supporting retribution and those endorsing rehabilitation sponsored the Stop Turning out Prisoners Act (STOP)--in bill H.R. 667--which, along with the Stopping Abusive Prisoner Lawsuits Act, severely inhibits inmates’ capacity to sue prisons for inhumane treatment. A Republican bill in New Jersey’s legislature proposes to eliminate recreational and educational activities for some violent offenders.

California Attorney General Dan Lungren backs such measures. He wonders why modern society is reluctant to exact retribution, “a reluctant to exact retribution, “ civilized norm for thousands of years,” and requests a “simple balance of justice.”

“We ought to allow inmates to be healthy, and I am not suggesting we put them in dark dungeons,” Lungren said. “But I think we have gone to too much of an extreme. We don’t want to create an atmosphere that is not a whole lot different form a neighborhood basketball league. That’s wrong.”

He decried weightlifting contest, a longstanding prison pastime. At Lancaster, Davis oversees such contests from time to time.

“If I had my way, there wouldn’t be any weights in prison,” Lungren said. “There is a false sense that by Lancaster’s program, though the concept clearly did not tickle him: “I may be wrong, but there isn’t a whole lot of need for professional softball players on the outside.”

He noted an irony: Prisons add recreation programs, as money-strapped schools drop them.

To convince him that prison recreation had value, he said, someone would need statistical proof it enhances other correctional initiatives, such as those dedicated to substance-abuse prevention or education.

“They are in prison for a reason,” Lungren said. “A number of them have victims, and a number of those victims can no longer participate in neighborhood basketball competition. I would have difficulty justifying this to the victims, and the victims’ families.”

On the other side is the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Our position is that people ought to be rehabilitated, through drug programs, even through athletic programs,” said Paul Hoffman, a volunteer counsel for the ACLU who tracks the prison system. “Prisoners for the most part are going to get back into society. Certainly, sports programs of this sort, learning teamwork and reliance on other people, can only be good for them when they get out.”

And good for prison administration while they are in.

“It is important to have prisoners get involved in physical activity in a positive way, and this is a cheap way of doing it,” Hoffman said. “It lets off tension, so it may not be let off in other, dangerous ways.”

Added Craig Brown, director of the California Youth Authority: “The purpose of prison is punishment. That said, thought, we ought to give them chances to rehabiliter’s program, some chose to focus on deterrence and prevention.

“The big problem is not making prisons punitive enough, which frustrates people’s feeling that something bad would happen to them there, a necessary deterrent to crime,” said Charles Hobson, an attorney for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, which litigates prison-related cases. “But I can’t say this kind of program is flat-out wrong in every circumstance, if it does lessen overcrowding.”

Joe Maloney is executive director of the Citizenship and Law-Related Education Center in Sacramento, a bipartisan organization essentially involved with community and educational programs. He contends that prison rehabilitation is usually too late to redirect delinquent lives, and always too late to fix their damage to society.

“The better investment is to give to youth early rather than to worry about those who have been incarcerated,” Maloney said. “Once they’re in the system, it’s real tough.”

Politics are not the coach’s game.

“I don’t look at it as rehabilitation,” Davis said. “But if someone gets involved in something and has some success, well, you never know, maybe it will make that person feel better about himself.”

Davis just knows it’s his job. He enjoys his time with inmates, most of whom he knows by name as well as booking number, and they appear to relate well to him. As he passes by them, they ask him for soda pop and karate movies. He shakes his head.

“I don’t call them favors,” Davis said, smiling. “Suggestions.”

Occasionally, an inmate will discuss his criminal past with Davis but most avoid the topic. To Davis, they are not convicted felons but athletes.