Lack of Space Crowds Out Safety in Prisons

Re “Inmates Losing Space as Prisons Add Bunks,” July 28: On Dec. 31, 2003, the California Department of Corrections (CDC) closed three private prisons that housed a total of 1,000 inmates at a cost considerably less than the cost to house an inmate in a state institution. The cost included rehabilitation programming.

The CDC said it no longer needed the private beds because the inmate population was declining. Within three months of the closures, the CDC announced an overcrowding crisis and began triple-bunking inmates in gymnasiums and dayrooms. Truth is that the state prison guards union did not like private facilities and pressed to close them. Overcrowding is now jeopardizing the safety of inmates and guards while three private facilities sit empty.

Gary White

Bakersfield

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Your article describing the last-ditch efforts of the CDC to find bed space for an ever-growing inmate population is almost comical when viewed from an insider’s perspective. You couch this situation as if it is a new idea that is at the same time the system’s last idea. It is neither.

The CDC has been using dayrooms for housing for decades, and many even worse plans exist in the absence of true living space. The Times claims the situation raises new questions about safety as inmates compete for elbowroom. Those questions aren’t new; the officers union has been asking them for just as many decades. You view these questions as self-serving and an example of improper muscle-flexing when asked by those people faced with the unsafe working conditions this article describes. Just another irony those of us who read your paper notice; it causes us to say, “Hmm.”

Marty Aroian

Chino Chapter President, Calif. Correctional Peace Officers Assn.