Bill Seeks to Restore Media’s Inmate Access

Saying inmates “should not be treated as celebrities,” Republican Gov. Pete Wilson in 1997 vetoed legislation to overturn curbs on reporters’ access to state prisoners.

Now a bipartisan group of legislators has banded together to advance a similar proposal, hoping that Democratic Gov. Gray Davis will look at it more kindly.

“The bill restores the ability of the press to conduct [in-person] interviews with inmates,” said Assemblywoman Carole Migden (D-San Francisco), who is reviving the measure with Republican support. “It is crucial to maintain public accountability of the prison system during a period of drastic change and growth.”

For more than two decades, the Department of Corrections allowed journalists to conduct interviews with inmates inside prison walls. But in 1996 the Wilson administration banned the practice.

“Inmates no longer got special privileges for interviews,” said Tip Kindel, a Corrections Department spokesman. He said similar restrictions are in place in about a dozen other states.

In 1997, the Legislature sought to overturn the policy. Wilson rejected the legislation, saying: “Interviews with prisoners about their crimes tend to glamorize criminal activity and criminals at the cost of pain to crime victims.”

Now, Migden is pushing AB 1440, which is similar to the bill Wilson vetoed. It is scheduled for its first hearing Tuesday before the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

Migden’s measure, in effect, would lift the Wilson-era restrictions, which also included a ban on reporters receiving confidential mail from inmates.

Supporters are hoping that Davis, even though he does not want to be seen as soft on prisoners, will sign Migden’s bill if it reaches his desk.

Michael Bustamante, Davis’ press secretary, said the administration recently declined to make an exception to prison media regulations when ABC News sought to interview an inmate who wanted to donate his kidney to his ailing daughter.

Bustamante said that decision applied only to the one case and the administration has yet to take a position on Migden’s proposal. “I haven’t even asked [the governor] about that,” Bustamante said.

Supporters of the bill include the California Newspaper Publishers Assn. and a range of lawmakers from conservative Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) to liberal Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles).

James Ewert, legal counsel for the publishers group, told Migden in a letter last month: “Journalists require access to prison inmates in order to properly investigate newsworthy events that take place in California prisons.”

In the past, Ewert said, news stories “helped initiate important policy changes necessary to achieve the efficient administration of the prison system as well as providing accountability for one of California’s largest and most expensive public institutions.”

More recently, Hayden said, “the lack of media access . . . contributed to problems of covering up abuses and deaths of inmates at places like Corcoran State Prison” south of Fresno.

McClintock added: “Free societies do not hold their prisoners incommunicado.”

He said Wilson’s concerns that “celebrity” inmates could take advantage of a lifting of the restrictions were overblown. “The last I heard, Charlie Manson was pretty well known anyway and I don’t believe is highly regarded by the general public,” he said.