Pubdate: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Copyright: 2000 San Jose Mercury News Contact: 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190 Fax: (408) 271-3792 Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/ Author: Elsa C. Arnett And Hallye Jordan OVERCROWDING, VIOLENCE PLAGUE PRISON SYSTEM The violence at Pelican Bay State Prison on Wednesday once again puts the spotlight on California's troubled prison system as it struggles with problems of overcrowding and allegations of prisoner abuse. ``It's a horrific situation in the prisons,'' said Richard Becker, San Francisco coordinator of the National People's Campaign, a non-profit advocacy group calling for prison reform. California's prison system is the largest in the country, housing 161,000 inmates in 33 prisons, 38 fire and conservation camps, 14 community correctional facilities and two county jails. And over the past decade, the state has paid millions of dollars to settle cases of alleged excessive force, wrongful death and constitutional violations throughout this system. State officials are especially wary about violent incidents in the prisons following allegations that correctional officers at Corcoran State Prison in the Central Valley staged gladiator-style battles between rival inmates for their own entertainment in February and April of 1994. Preston Tate, a rapist, was shot to death by a guard during an exercise yard brawl in the April incident. As part of that probe, federal officials looked into whether the state's Corrections Department and Attorney General's Office impeded an investigation into those guards. A federal civil rights lawsuit brought by Tate's family was scheduled to go to trial next month, but has been postponed. Other notorious incidents include a case where four Corcoran guards were accused of setting up inmate Eddie Dillard to be raped in March 1993 by his cellmate as punishment for kicking a female guard at another prison. After years of investigations by state, federal and local authorities, the guards were eventually tried -- and all four were acquitted in November. As a result of those and other allegations, efforts have been made to tighten use-of-force regulations, with the most recent retooling coming last year, said Jeff Thompson, lobbyist for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the guards' union. Thompson said four bills were passed to improve training, clarify when use of lethal force is necessary and help guards use better judgment. But advocates for inmates and correction guards say conditions in the nation's largest correctional system need to be improved. As prisoners double up in cell bunks and stand in long lines for toilets and dinner, tempers flare. As prison guards wrestle with more and more inmates, nerves tense. And when these two problems converge, as they may have in the yard of Pelican Bay's highest-security wing of the maximum-security facility, violence erupts. ``The sheer number of prisoners in the system makes effective management all but impossible,'' said Steve Fama, a staff attorney at the Prison Law Office in San Rafael, a non-profit group that provides free legal services to state prisoners. Matthew Pavone, a former assistant U.S. attorney general in San Francisco, and lawyer representing a correctional officer involved in a lawsuit in Fresno, said the stress of monitoring the state's most vicious convicts takes a heavy toll. And working extra shifts because of staff shortages -- common in the prisons -- only exacerbates the strain. Becker, with the National People's Campaign, said Wednesday's riot was, in part, a symptom of the harsh conditions prisoners endure, like solitary confinement. ``At places like Pelican Bay there's no effort for rehabilitation, it's strictly punishment,'' Becker said. ``And that creates a very explosive situation.'' In 1998 in California, three prisoners were shot to death by guards breaking up fights, and a dozen other inmates died in altercations between prisoners, according to the state Corrections Department's report. California's prison system is also the deadliest in the nation, according to another study by the Criminal Justice institute, a Middletown, Conn., independent research group. California had 16 violent inmate deaths in 1997, compared with nine violent deaths in Texas prisons and 10 violent deaths in federal prisons. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea