Overdue Probe of Prisons

Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer’s decision to investigate two dozen suspicious shootings between 1989 and 1995 at Corcoran State Prison is a welcome departure from former Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren’s tendency to disregard evidence that state prison guards had needlessly opened fire on unarmed inmates. Guards in California prisons killed 39 inmates engaged in fistfights and melees in the last decade.

California had radically departed from national norms, which generally prohibit guards from shooting unarmed prisoners engaged in fistfights. A 1989 prison videotape, for example, showed a guard shooting an unarmed prisoner in the back as he walked away from a fight. To this day, however, no guard has been prosecuted for murder, manslaughter or assault with a deadly weapon. The guard seen on the videotape was exonerated by a state review panel.

The issue is not the coddling of prisoners; inmates are often dangerous people who require a firm hand. But that does not include being shot to death for throwing a punch at another inmate. Brutality endured in prison harms communities too, since most inmates return to life outside carrying whatever mental baggage they acquired in prison. That’s why Lockyer’s decision to investigate the shootings is a praiseworthy first step.

The Department of Corrections needs to overhaul the state’s shooting policies and prosecute guards when necessary. That should demonstrate that Gov. Gray Davis is not in thrall to the prison guards union, which spent $2 million on ads for his gubernatorial campaign. The union has traditionally exercised huge political clout in Sacramento.

Last week, Lockyer, a Democrat who served in the Legislature for 25 years, showed a sage unwillingness to make this a partisan crusade. He appointed as his chief deputy Peter Siggins, a Republican who had, under Wilson, defended the state against charges of prisoner abuse. Now Siggins and the Davis administration need to work together to swing the pendulum back toward the middle, preserving the right of prison administrators to keep order but also preserving the basic human rights of prisoners.