Clea Benson, “Deukmejian to Head Review of California Prison System,” The Sacramento Bee, March 5, 2004.

Former Gov. George Deukmejian, who presided over a dramatic expansion of the state's prison system in the 1980s, will oversee a panel on prison reform, the Schwarzenegger administration said Friday.

The panel will cull the best recommendations from existing prison reviews and report to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger every thirty days, officials said.

The commission will have two months to advise the governor about whether any of the state's aging prisons should be closed and will issue a final report with other short- and long-term recommendations in June. Officials said the panel would examine everything from staff training and ethics to cost-saving measures.

Schwarzenegger said last month that he would create the review team in response to a host of recent problems. Among them are reports of rampant violence at juvenile prisons, a "code of silence" that discourages prison employees from reporting wrongdoing, and the overspending of the $5.6 billion corrections budget by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Deukmejian, who is retired from legal practice and now lives in Long Beach, stayed away from discussing specific remedies Friday. But he said he believed some actions could be taken quickly.

"Those agencies have been troubled now for some time, and there's been a lot of criticism of them . . . so we're going to take a look at the organizational issues and hope to make some positive recommendations," he said in an interview.

Also appointed to the panel Friday was Joseph Gunn, who co-chaired a commission that oversaw reforms of the Los Angeles Police Department's troubled Rampart Division. Gunn will serve as executive director.

Robin Dezember, who was deputy director of the Department of Corrections under Deukmejian, will serve as a consultant. George Camp, a Connecticut-based expert on prison crowding, gangs, and riots will also advise.

As governor from 1983 to 1991, Deukmejian ran the state at a time when rising crime rates and tougher sentencing laws boosted the prison population from about 35,000 to roughly 93,000.

The inmate growth spurt exacerbated prison overcrowding in those years and forced Deukmejian and legislative budget makers to deal with cost overruns in both operations and construction programs. He oversaw a construction boom that increased the number of state prisons from 12 to 33.

Today, there are about 160,000 inmates in state prisons.

"As a result of the changes in the laws and the expansion of the system, the state's been able to remove all those criminals from the communities," Deukmejian said Friday. "When I was governor, we didn't have the kinds of issues that have risen to the surface here in the last few years, but hopefully we can correct the current problems and again restore some public confidence."

Deukmejian said potential prison closings would be on the list of issues for review.

"During the time that I was there, we had a growing amount of overcrowding, and I think that's probably still the case," he said. "As of today, we'll have to look at it and see whether or not there can and should be any consolidation."

Some groups that have called for shuttering prisons and reforming tough sentencing laws were critical of Deukmejian's appointment Friday.

But State Sen. Gloria Romero, who is co-chairing a series of hearings on problems in the prison system, said she welcomed the former governor's input.

"As a figure he's very symbolic in that he is tough on crime, but he's also fiscally very responsible," she said. "I've always said we can be tough on crime but we can be smart on crime, so it's an interesting blend."

Romero also praised Gunn, the panel's director, for his work with the Los Angeles Police Department.

"Mr. Gunn will bring expertise in terms of his knowledge of officer conduct, corruption, and the code of silence, and the need to fundamentally address the culture," she said.