Firm’s Plans Is News to Prison Officials

SACRAMENTO — Backed by an influential state senator, a company has promised to build California’s first major commercial penal institution--but state prison authorities who would supply the inmates said the ambitious venture was news to them.

Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) and the head of the Corrections Corp. of America conceded this week that they had not as yet informed the Department of Corrections of plans to build a 2,000-inmate private prison in the desert town of California City in Kern County.

But Polanco said the overcrowded state penal system, with 152,000 inmates in 33 prisons, is running out of room and the public and Legislature have shown they are unwilling to invest billions more in prison expansion.

So Polanco believes that inmates for a privately financed and operated prison are automatically assured.

“Build it and they will come,” Polanco said, echoing a line from a movie.

Polanco said he has been exploring possibilities for privatizing prisons as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Prison Construction and Operations, and has been the author of legislation to require certain nonviolent female offenders to be sentenced to private institutions. The California City project, however, would not require legislative action, he said.

But state prison officials and Gov. Pete Wilson were not so confident that the Tennessee-based company was on the right track in California.

“We have not had formal or informal discussions” with the corporation, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Christine May. “We have no way of knowing whether what they plan to build will meet our criteria,” which include strict guidelines for security and prisoner activities.

Five privately operated correctional facilities house California inmates now, but none handles more than about 450 at a time, May said.

Wilson spokesman Ron Low said: “The governor is always interested in looking at ways to make government more efficient. But we have some security and liability concerns regarding the construction of a private prison.”

Polanco said initial meetings with the prison company and Wilson’s staff would be held as early as next week to coordinate plans.

“The safety and other requirements raised by the governor are not going to be a problem,” Polanco said.

Outright opponents include Don Novey, head of the 25,000-member California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. union.

“We should not have privatization of public safety,” Novey said. “These guys are coming here for pure profit.” And, referring to an industry that pays officers less than current state wage rates, Novey added: “They are no good for the profession.”

At a Capitol news conference, Corrections Corp. of America’s president, David L. Myers, said the company has extensive experience meeting government conditions for private prison operations, which the firm conducts at 61 locations nationally and internationally.

A spokeswoman for the company said it has not done business previously in California.

Records show, and the spokeswoman confirmed, that the company was founded and financed by friends of Lamar Alexander, a former Tennessee governor and 1996 Republican presidential primary candidate. As governor, Alexander supported a $250-million proposal by Corrections Corp. of America to build and run two Tennessee prisons.

Also while he was governor, Alexander’s wife bought $5,000 in stock in the company and later, to avoid potential conflict, swapped the stock for that of another company, which she sold in 1989 for $142,000.

At the news conference this week, Myers said the company would buy land and build a prison in California City over an 18-month period beginning this year. He said the company is contemplating an investment of $80 million to $100 million.

Officials from California City, who were at the news conference, said they would welcome the new industry, which promises employment to 400 residents and would generate a $6-million-a-year payroll.