Former State Senator to Fill Prisons Post

Gov.-elect Gray Davis on Saturday named a former state senator from Riverside County as his Cabinet-level advisor on corrections and asked him to scrutinize troubled Corcoran State Prison and review new state rules on the use of lethal force against inmates.

Davis’ call for Robert Presley, the new secretary for the state Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, to assess these and other policies follows a steady stream of news reports exposing serious flaws in the operation of the state prison system.

In November, an independent panel determined that two dozen fatal and serious shootings of Corcoran inmates were not justified and that the state’s system for investigating and prosecuting shootings had broken down.

“There’s a couple of things the governor wanted me to check out right away, and one of them is the shooting policy and the status of Corcoran,” Presley said in a telephone interview.

Presley, 74, a conservative Democrat who served 12 years as Riverside County undersheriff before serving in the Legislature, declined to specify other Davis administration priorities in the area of corrections, saying, “I want to get the lay of the land [and] to keep an open mind until I see all of this up close.”

With Saturday’s appointment, Davis, who is to be sworn into office Monday, completed his Cabinet, filling the only vacant top-tier job.

In Presley, Davis has tapped an influential law enforcement insider who served as a legislative overseer of prisons even as he championed massive new prison construction in the 1980s and early 1990s. Presley, who was backed by the influential prison guards union in elections, earned a reputation in the Capitol for being able to work well with Republicans and Democrats alike when he chaired a joint committee on prisons.

After Presley left the Legislature in 1994, Republican Gov. Pete Wilson appointed him to his current job as chairman of the Youthful Offender Parole Board. The panel has jurisdiction over juveniles in the custody of the Youth Authority.

Citing Presley’s integrity and experience, Davis in a prepared statement hailed the new appointee as “the right person at the right time for this important job.”

Presley will succeed Quintin L. Villanueva Jr., who has held the post since April. Besides prisons and the youth authority, he will oversee five other boards that deal with a range of issues, including parole.

One question Presley declined to answer is whether the new administration will retain Cal Terhune as director of corrections. Terhune, appointed by Wilson 18 months ago, has launched a number of reforms, including a policy prohibiting state guards from firing assault rifles to stop nonlethal fistfights and other melees among inmates.

Terhune praised Presley’s selection, but declined to speculate whether Davis will bring him into the new administration to continue running the 160,000-inmate prison system.

In his campaign for governor, Davis seldom, if ever, addressed prison issues. Davis received strong backing from the prison guards union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., which aired TV commercials on his behalf.

The Davis administration, however, will face a series of challenges related to the nation’s largest prison system.

The Times last July reported that two state probes failed to fully investigate 50 serious and fatal shootings at Corcoran, in the San Joaquin Valley.

The revelations prompted six days of dramatic state legislative hearings and a renewed investigation into dozens of shootings.

Five guards were subsequently indicted in a rape case at Corcoran; a new state prison watchdog law was later signed by Gov. Wilson; and the Legislature appropriated more funds to beef up internal investigations at state prisons.

During the hearings, state officials announced the creation of an independent panel that later found 24 of 31 fatal and serious shootings it reviewed at Corcoran were not justified.

In the fall, The Times reported that during the past four years 12 inmates have been killed and 32 wounded by guards firing rifles to break up fights at prisons statewide. One week later, the state Department of Corrections agreed to stop its practice of shooting and killing brawling inmates. The department is now revising its guard training program and rewriting its policy on deadly force.

Presley said the new restrictions on lethal force “sounded reasonable” to him and “pretty close to most police agencies.”

Looking at prison growth since the early 1980s--21 new facilities statewide in 15 years--Presley said he has no regrets about backing such construction. “The number of inmates was rising so fast . . . we needed to build all these prisons,” he said.

But Presley acknowledged that in the past he had favored some alternate methods of incarceration, such as a plan to turn a closed air force base into a prison at which drug offenders could be treated. Presley said he is unsure if he will dust off that proposal, which stalled when he was in the Legislature.

Asked whether the prison guards union would have special access to the administration because of its political support, Presley said that as a lawmaker he “always would treat them as anyone else when they contributed [to his campaigns]. You listen to them and that’s really the extent of it.”

He said several weeks ago he talked with Don Novey, president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., and “at least he wasn’t opposed” to his selection. On Saturday, Novey was unavailable for comment.

Times staff writer Mark Arax contributed to this report.