It's Put-Up-Or-Shut-Up Time For Governor Ah-nold on Prison Access

By: Mark Fitzgerald During the unlikely whirlwind campaign that landed him in the governor's office of America's most populous state, Arnold Schwarznegger repeatedly promised to increase Californians' access to public institutions and information.

The number-one action point in what he called "The People's Reform Plan" was "Open the Government Up to Sunshine." He not only endorsed SCA1, the referendum proposal on this November's ballot to explicitly guarantee a right to open government in the California constitution, he said he would expand it.

"I have one change to SCA1," he wrote in his platform. "I would eliminate the special protection from public scrutiny of proceedings, records, and deliberations of 'the Legislature, the Members of the Legislature, and its employees, committees, and caucuses.' There is no reason why the Legislature should be shielded from the antiseptic of sunshine."

But now Schwarznegger faces the first real test of his commitment to transparency: Is he willing to extend "the antiseptic of sunshine" to California's scandal-ridden prison system?

For the third time in more than a decade, California's legislature has passed a bill that would restore the right of reporters to arrange one-on-one interviews with inmates in state prisons -- and to bring their notebooks, cameras and tape recorders to the sessions.

Astonishingly, that right was taken away from journalists in 1996 by then-Gov. Pete Wilson after more than 20 years of routine access to prisons. "It came in as an 'emergency measure,' though there was never any occasion of an emergency cited," says Peter Sussman, the freelance writer who has long been the point man on prison access for the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).

Now, reporters must jump through a maze of bureaucratic hoops to get access to prisoners. First they must arrange to join the prisoner's official visitors list, a process that can take months. And once they are face to face with an inmate, the regulations say, reporters cannot take any of the "tools of their trade." That means not only no cameras or tape recorders, but no note pads -- not even their own pens and pencils.

"If you do get in," Sussman says, "you're lucky if you can find a pencil or a piece of paper in the room."

Opponents of lifting this system of de facto censorship say they are trying to spare the feelings of victims and their families by stopping the media from glamorizing criminals. In a state with perhaps more celebrity serial killer -- from Charles Manson to the Night Slayer -- this argument has some appeal.

But as the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA) pointed out repeatedly, skeptical journalists hardly glamorize creeps like Manson -- and actually want access to better report on conditions in the prison.

It's probably no coincidence that the "emergency" press blackout in the prison system followed, as CNPA notes, a series of revelations of cruelty to prisoners that included guards conducting "gladiator contests" between inmates at the Corcoran state prison. In these eight years of limited access, other scandals have emerged to the point that the very real possibility exists that the Department of Corrections will be put under a form of federal receivership.

It's no exaggeration to say that most Californians know more about what happened at the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq than they know about what's going on in the 32 prisons in their own state.

Schwarznegger's corrections secretary, Roderick Hickman, believes the governor should veto the access bill. An article by Mark Gladstone of the Contra Costa Times' Sacramento bureau noted that on a recent tour of Mule Creek State Prison with Schwarznegger in tow, Hickman said, "I don't think that the media glamorization of some of the crimes that the inmates have played upon society need to be reported upon," he said.

But press advocates say Schwarznegger has good reason not to follow that advice. "If Schwarznegger is smart," Sussman says, "he will separate himself from (the corrections department) because he's not responsible for the scandals that have happened. But if he keeps the secrecy going, and keeps the lid on interviews, then he will be linked to the scandals."

SPJ, CNPA and the other proponents of the bill ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to prison reform groups know that they face a tough precedent. Similar legislation was vetoed twice by the Republican Wilson and later by Democratic Gov. Gray Davis.

Schwarznegger has three weeks left to make up his mind about enacting or vetoing the legislation. Access advocates are hoping he keeps his campaign promises by signing. "He ran specifically on a platform of open government," Sussman says, "and of open access."