CLUB FED? Women's prison in Dublin has some perks, but it's no picnic

Tuesday, June 16, 1998

DUBLIN-- Broke and burned out, social worker Patricia Clark and her 29- year-old daughter turned to bank robbery as a quick solution to their troubles.

During the heist in Lemmon Valley, Nev., last year, Clark, 51, said she wore a Frankenstein mask, held her BB gun backwards and blurted out "don't give me the money" to bewildered tellers.

The bumbling mother-daughter team was sentenced to three years in prison at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin.

"I was in Washoe County Jail, scared and shaking and crying, waiting to be transferred," Clark said recently. "The jail nurse patted my back and told me everything would be OK. She said she heard we were going to a country club."

Like other federal lockups, the Dublin penitentiary is sometimes called "Club Fed."

But at a time when prisons and jails across the country are cutting back on recreation activities for inmates, it's business as usual at the low-security Dublin institution: Its curriculum still reads like a community college course catalog.

Horticulture, forklift training, computer programing, art therapy and parenting classes are part of a long list of programs available.

Plus there are clubs and courses, such as knitting and meditation, aimed at relieving stress for the estimated 950 inmates.

With its sweet-smelling gardens and tennis courts, the penitentiary may not seem much like a prison.

Life on the inside, however, is no picnic, insists Warden Constance Reese.

"They can't go anywhere; their freedom has been taken away," Reese said, sitting at a desk with the American flag hanging beside her. "They come here as punishment, not to be punished."

These courses don't coddle inmates, but rather teach them discipline, self-respect and responsibility, Reese said.

From the time the prison was built in 1974 on the eastern edge of Dublin in an old army post, it has housed some well- known inmates.

Among them are Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss; Russian spy Svetlana Ogorodnikov; Autumn Jackson, who tried to blackmail Bill Cosby for millions; and would- be assassin Sara Jane Moore, who tried in 1975 to kill then-President Gerald Ford.

Perhaps the most notorious inmate was kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, released in 1979 after serving two years for robbing a bank with the Symbionese Liberation Army. She claimed that she had been brainwashed.

Celebrities don't enjoy special treatment, and fellow inmates are usually indifferent to them, said Dominic Gutierrez, the prison's executive assistant.

The institution is next to two other Bureau of Prisons facilities -- a men's detention center and a work camp, switched three years ago to serve only women.

When the camp was an all-male prison, it had its share of famous outlaws such as junk-bond king Michael Milken and ex-Los Angeles police officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell, convicted of violating the civil rights of motorist Rodney King.

The detention center is now the only male institution at the site.

For a time, women were sent to a wing of the men's detention center as discipline. In 1995, three women who were sent to the wing charged that they were raped and beaten by male inmates who were let into their cells at night by guards.

A $500,000 settlement for the women was reached in March. The prison has since stopped placing women in the detention center, fired some of the guards and adopted a sexual harassment sensitivity program for its 274 employees.

The case proved to be the blackest mark on an institution that prides itself on providing a clean, safe environment for prisoners.

But the prisoners themselves have sometimes drawn attention, including two who pulled off a brazen jailbreak in 1986.

Ronald McIntosh was a con man serving a sentence for fraud at the camp, and his lover, Samantha Lopez, was incarcerated at the prison on bank robbery charges.

In October 1986, McIntosh escaped and later hijacked a helicopter. He then flew back to the Dublin prison and lifted his sweetheart to freedom.

They were captured 10 days later while picking up wedding rings in a suburban Sacramento jewelry store.

After that escape, quarter-inch steel wires were strung above the grounds of every federal prison.

The prison doesn't have bars or gun towers, but surrounding the grounds are tall double fences topped with razor wire.

Unlike many state prisons and jails, the prison is not overcrowded, in part because a new penitentiary in Connecticut has absorbed some of the growing population of female prisoners.

The quarters, however, are still cramped. Clark and her daughter share a standard 8-by-10-foot cell with another woman. Bunk beds, lockers, a small sink and toilet take up nearly every inch.

The cells are grouped in clusters of 300, with at least one guard stationed at each unit.

The women are told when to get up, when to eat, which television shows they can watch and what kind of books they can read, and they all wear a uniform of khaki button-down shirts and slacks.

They spend every weekday working clerical, factory or maintenance jobs on the prison grounds earning anywhere from 4 cents to $1.15 an hour and are locked down five times a day to be counted.

On weekends, they can watch PG-rated movies. "Stuff like 'Old Yeller,' " said Paula Williams, 38, of Kansas City, Mo., twisting her face in exaggerated disappointment. "I can't wait 'til the day when I can watch action movies again."

Before receiving visitors, inmates are strip-searched.

"Sometimes, I tell my friends not to come see me because I can't handle the searches," said Sara Jane Moore, now 70.

Moore reads national newspapers and two nights a week teaches needlework and cross-stitching. She once won a blue ribbon at the Alameda County Fair for a pillow she designed.

Others knit baby clothes and blankets that are donated to poor children at Christmas.

Self-improvement programs -- like drug rehabilitation, parenting and classes for high school diplomas -- are always crowded.

Other courses, like meditation, relaxation, art and knitting, help ease stress.

"We try to encourage the women," Reese said. "This is an opportunity for them to turn their lives around, and hopefully when they return to the community they won't return to a life of crime."

Williams, jailed for four years on a drug conspiracy charge, has successfully finished the 500-hour drug abuse program. She sings in the prison church choir. She is scheduled for release August 6.

"I've been praying to the Lord to help me stay focused," she said, flashing a wide smile. "We have racquetball, tennis and weight lifting. We can watch movies. I sing. But this is no clubhouse."

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