Need to Build More Prisons

* Regarding the articles on prisons in Opinion, Nov. 29: For years the voters in California have been sold a bill of goods by the Correctional Peace Officers Assn. They have sold us on the idea that public safety requires construction of huge, concrete prisons.

The people of California simply want to be protected from convicted criminals. Correctional officers want something more. They want absolute control over the men in their charge, whether those men need absolute control or not.

In concrete prisons, inmates can be locked in their cells 23 hours a day. They can be punished at will by the guards. This degree of control is certainly necessary for inmates who have proven they need this level of custody. But the vast majority of inmates simply want to serve their sentences in peace. Those inmates do not need concrete cells or such restrictive custody.

The public is just as well-served in barracks prisons with workshops, schools, etc., all within double-fenced perimeters with guard towers to prevent escapes. Costs of both construction and maintenance are far lower. That lowers the cost of incarceration to the state. Such prisons now exist in California. They are no greater risk to the public than hard-lock facilities. They encourage, if not force, guards to treat inmates in a more humane manner. In the federal prison system inmates are classified to medium-security, then earn their custody status upward or downward unless their cases are particularly notorious or their backgrounds particularly dangerous. This type of classification is not possible today in California. Minimum-security facilities are simply not being built.

W.K. MURPHY

Van Nuys