A Native American tribe in Southern California wants to build an 8,400-bed prison on its remote reservation next to the Salton Sea and lease it to the state — a project that would be the first of its kind in the nation.
Under the proposal, the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians and its business partners would finance the $2 billion construction project and maintain the state-of-the-art, medium-security prison—it would be the largest in California, and one of the largest in the country. The state would then staff and run the facilityand pay the tribe an annual rent of nearly $175 million.
The project,which tribal leaders have discussed with former and current heads of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation,would bring at least 2,000 jobs and more financial security to the tribe, which has a small casino in Thermal. They also say the facilitywouldbe designed to reduce recidivism.
But at least one local leader familiar with the project questionswhether the proposal would actually bring economic development to the swath of the desert.
"I don't know that the community as a whole has embraced the idea of building these institutions," said Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, a Coachella Democrat whose district includes the site of the proposed prison.
Torres Martinez leaders, however, say their main motivation for the prison project isenvironmental.Renderings show the facility would bebuilt up against a mountain and bordered by open desert and agriculture.
The tribe says it wants to restore the dying Salton Sea,11,000 acres of which are included in their land. Water would be drawn from an aquifer underneath the reservation to supply the prison and its thousands of inmates; hundreds of thousands of gallons in wastewater would then be filtered and pumped into the sea, according to Chairman Thomas Tortez.
“When I talk to my membership, they are adamant about having and seeing something done about the Salton Sea, and they’re tired of study after study after study,” he said. “They want to see something done that would be tangible, something that they could see.”
Emails and documents obtained by The Desert Sun through the California Public Records Act detail communications over nearly two years between the tribe and its project partners and elected leaders and Department of Corrections officials and staff. They reveal that the team has pitchedthe prison concept and architectural renderings to former Department of Corrections Secretary Scott Kernan in May 2018 and current Secretary Ralph Diaz in August 2019, among others.
The tribe's partners include Temecula-based Tribal Nations Rehabilitation & Corrections,a private land management company thatis partneringwith the tribe to develop the land and gain access to the water for the Salton Sea, and Phoenix-based Sage Concepts LLC. The Sacramento-based California Tribal Business Alliance is supporting the tribe's efforts.
KernanthanksTortez in a May 2018 letter for meeting with him and his staff regarding the prison concept and said, "I have included your proposal in the CDCR transition package for the new Administration,” referring to the fact that Gov. Jerry Brown was leaving office at the end of 2018.
So far, however, the proposal has not been given a green light fromthe state.
Corrections Department spokesperson Dana Simas would not confirm whether agency officials had met with the tribe and its associates, asthe emails indicated they have.
“There is no proposal under consideration at this time to build or contract for new correctional facilities,” Simas said in a statement.
The tribeand its partnerssaid they need a memorandum of understanding and a letter of intent with the state corrections department to move forward with construction. Tribal Nations Rehabilitation & Corrections has already secured more than $2 billion for constructionfrom Wall Street, according to CEO Denis Turner, and architect Lynn Arrington said the entirefacility could theoretically be built by 2024.
Facility couldreplacestate's older prisons
The tribe and its partners are proposing to buildthe nearly 3 million-square-foot facility on approximately 760 acres of tribal land nearthe northwestern shore of the Salton Sea, about 150 miles east ofLos Angeles, according to a draft lease obtained by The Desert Sun.The project would be exempt from California Environmental Quality Act requirements, due to its location on sovereign land.
The tribe would charge the state a monthly base rent of more than $12 million, according to the lease.
The tribe and its partners stress that the project, which they describe as a rehabilitation and education center,would replace some of the state's oldest and most dilapidated prisons— rather than simply add capacity.
They point to a Februaryreport from the Legislative Analyst’s Office, which said the state’s 12 oldest prisons required more than $11 billion in infrastructure improvement projects. It recommended the state close two prisons due to extensive infrastructure problems.
Those backing the project offer a solution to the state's infrastructure woes: The Department of Corrections could close some of its older and more dilapidated prisons — including the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, the California Institution for Men in Chino and the California Institution for Women in Corona — and transfer both inmates and staff to the desert facility.
The three prisons together have the capacity to hold 6,865 inmates, while the desert facility would have 8,400 beds. It would have the capacity to houseapproximately 6% of the states’ incarcerated population, according to Mark Fisher, chief financial officerwith Tribal Nations Rehabilitation & Corrections.
“We’re not building a new prison per se," said Chris Lindstrom,executive officer for the California Tribal Business Alliance. "We’re closing old, dilapidated prisons with malfunctional capacity, and replacing them with state-of-the-art modern facilities that could give the (rehabilitative)programming to people and help give them the ability to come out stronger on the other side."
The facility would be built in two phases, the planners projected: $999.6 million to build 4,200 beds in one structure, and $915.1 million to build the second portion of 4,200 more beds in another separate structure, for a total of $1.91 billion.
Each structure would then house four individual facilities, two of which would hold "security level three" inmates, and two that would hold level four inmates.Both of those levels are considered to be the highest security.
If it moves forward, the facility would become one of the largest prisons in the country.
The Cook County Department of Corrections in Chicago, for example, has a daily inmate population of about 8,000 at one physical site.The Los Angeles County jail system, only three hours away,held a daily average of 17,070 inmates across several different facilities as of last year.
The Torres Martinez project also wouldlikely be the first of its kind:According to Tortez, no other tribe in the United States has previously leased land to the state or federal government for a correctional facility. Many tribes currently have their own small jails or other correctional facilities within tribal communities, but those facilities are operated either by tribal authorities directly or the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
“I think this would be unique and set a precedent,” Tortez said.
Facility's water usage aimed at Salton Sea
While the tribe cites several reasons why it is proposing a prison on tribal land,its major goal is to support the health of the Salton Sea.
The sea, technically California's largest lake, has been shrinking for several years.
As the lake continues to decrease in size, the dry lakebed underneath sends toxic dustlaced with pesticidesblowing through the air and into nearby communities. Bird populations in the area are also crashingas the salinity of the lake gets higher and threatens tilapia and other fish, a criticalfood source.
Tortez said the prison project would help alleviate the Salton Sea problem by releasing 640,000 gallons of treated water into the lake from the facility every day. The costassociated with that process, part of which would include building a water treatment plant, would be about $50 million,Arrington said. Construction of the plant is included under the project's$999.6-million "phase one."'
"The inflow will provide much-needed water to help address the catastrophe occurring to the Salton Sea and the surrounding communities," he wrote in a May 2018 letter to former Corrections Department Secretary Kernan.
Without a project of this scale, he said, the tribe wouldn't be able to draw up the millions of gallons of water necessary from its aquifers to supplement the lake. Currently, there are only about 30 homes on the reservation and a couple dozen wells.
"So you would need something at this level to bring (up)that much water," he said. "We're looking at something that's immediately going to resolve the situation, and this is one of the fastest ways we've seen to make that happen."
Many other large-scale remedies have been suggested for the Salton Sea.The Salton Sea Management Program, for one, was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017 and proposes constructing thousands of acres of dust suppression and habitat projects around the sea to limit contaminants that blow into the air. The plan is non-binding.
Tribe touts prison's 'innovative' configuration
In presenting the project,the tribe and its partners describe the facilityas a “rehabilitation center” and say itsstate-of-the art design and programs would help reduce the cycle of incarceration.
They say Native Americans, who they report have a 70% recidivism rate, are particularly underserved by the correctional system.
While concrete data on Native American incarceration rates in the U.S. islimited, Census data from previous yearshas showed Nativepeople are over-represented in correctional facilities compared to their proportion of the overall population.
In older state facilities, Arrington explained, inmates’ beds and yards are sometimes far from the buildings housing education and vocational services. The proposed prison, which would comprise two 4,200-bed structures,would provide people with easier access to such support, he said.
“The innovative part of this project is the way it’s configured within each prison,” said Arrington, whose 45-year careerspans the design of threemajor facilities for CDCR, one federal facility and severalCalifornia county facilities. “The CDCR was looking to try to create much smaller groupings of people and to redistribute programming throughout the facility.”
The tribe and its partners envision different trades being taught at the facility, along with educational or industry-focused programs. One initial suggestion from Arrington was a "save the Salton Sea"program, where inmates could learn about the prison’s mission to replenish the sea.But because the tribe won’t actually be operating the prison, programming would also depend on the mission of the CDCR, the partners said.
The original concept for this type of prison came from Witiqa “Denis” Turner, a now-deceased member of theRincon Band of Luiseño Indians and a spiritual adviser who would visit Native American inmates.
Turner wanted to change how the state provides education and rehabilitation services to incarcerated people, Tortez wrote in a June 9email to State Sen. Holly Mitchel, a Los Angeles Democrat, and Assemblymember Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat.
"He wanted to see when people get out of prison, that they don't carry that stigma for the rest of their lives," explained Turner's father, 72-year-old Denis Turner.
Turner founded Tribal Nations Rehabilitation & Corrections andspent several years exploring the idea of constructing a rehabilitation and education center on tribal land with other Native American tribes, the elder Turner said. But he didn't find a tribe that met all the requirements needed for the project— adequate water, infrastructure and road access— until he connected with Torres Martinez.
After Turner's death at age 44, his father became the CEO of the Tribal Nations group andcontinued working with Tortez and the tribe to realize his son's vision.
Tribe says prison could employ members, but some experts question economic potential
The idea of a prison seemed like a winning proposition for the Torres Martinez tribe.
Torres Martinez’s tribal land of 24,000 acres is checkerboardedaround the northern half of the Salton Sea, about an hour’s drive east of Palm Springs. The tribe’s more rural location has made certain previous business ventures more difficult, Tortez said, including its Red Earth Casino in Thermal. The tribe also operates a travel center near the Salton Sea.
“Gaming is not something that has been fruitful for our tribe due to the location,” he said. “We did look at plans to build another (casino)but it just doesn’t seem like something that’s going to be fruitful for the Torres Martinez tribe.”
The unemployment rate on the reservation currently hovers around 50%, he said. “Half of our people that want to work cannot work because there’s no economic opportunity within the area,” he said.
Torres Martinez tribal leaders have been tight-lipped in recent years about sharing the tribe’s exact number of enrolled members, but have described the figure as “hundreds.”
Proponents say the prison wouldcreatemore than 2,000 jobs inside the facility and others at hotels, restaurants and schools that they expect will crop up near the compound, which would be located near the intersection of State Route 86 and 81st Avenue.
Tribe members would benefit from more employment opportunities, Tortez said.
“All of those jobs and trainings that could be provided for the tribe, just in that area alone, is huge,” he said.
Some experts, however, have called into question the assumption that prisons in rural areas always drive economic growth.
Garcia said there are already four prisons in his district — Ironwood State Prison and Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in the Riverside County city of Blythe, and Calipatria and Centinela state prisons in Imperial County.
Whilethese facilitiesprovide some jobs, he said, "I don't know that those are the economic development instruments that will turn around the economic circ*mstance of our region."
A study published in Social Science Quarterly in 2010also“cast further doubt on claims that prisons offer a viable economic development option for struggling rural communities.”
And anessay from the book “Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment” warned in 2002 that the majority of jobs in public prisons don’t go to residents who already live in the community. Many positions, like management and correctional officer jobs, come with experience requirements that rural residents might not have. And public corrections systems often have veteran personnel to utilize from other prisons, essay author Tracy Huling wrote.
Hulingalso noted that new prison towns in California in the early 2000shad “great difficulty” attracting other industries around them. That difficulty could be due to the perception of the prison as an “undesirable neighbor,” or that some prisons don’t conform to “environmental and other controls,”Huling wrote.
“Despite the prevailing wisdom regarding prisons as economic panaceas, evidence suggests that prison boosters in rural America should be careful what they wish for,” Huling wrote.
But unlike other types of prison developments, theTorres Martinez tribe is a sovereign nation, meaning it has theauthority to makeland-use decisions on its reservation, with some caveats. The tribe's project could be subject toprovisions fromtheNational Environmental Policy Act, for example.
"The difference here," Garciasaid, "is that we are dealing with a tribal nation, that’s a sovereign nation, that has some autonomy and jurisdictional authority to make certain decisions."
He added: "I believe that the tribe is respectful and willing enough to work with the local community to do the necessary outreach."
Debate over the prison's relation to new state law
Garcia said he has spoken with Tortez about the project a couple of times, including as recently as a few weeks ago, andadvised the chairman that this is not the right time to be attempting to build a new prison in California. Garcia cited the state's historic deficit— which stood at$54 billion as of May — resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.
He also said he and other legislators have been working to reduce recidivism. Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017 signed a bill that Garcia authored, allowing some counties, including Riverside and Imperial, to implement pilot programs to provide re-entry services and support to people being released from county jail.
"We've taken great steps collectively to try to figure out a way to make sure that we are not sending people to prison for a long time if there are other ways of addressing the problems closer to home," he said.
He also questioned whether the proposal would violate the spirit of AB 32, a state law implemented in January that phases out the state's use of private prisons and immigration detention centers.
"It's not the right time for the conversation that the chairman has brought forward," Garcia said. "We right now are in the prison-closing moment —not in the prison-building moment."
But the tribe and its partners have argued that the project would not be subject to AB 32. Unlike facilities that are both owned and operated by private companies, the prison would be managed by state officials and staffed by state employees, they said.
"This project would meet the letter and spirit of the the law," said Lindstrom of the California Tribal Business Alliance.
Garcia has also advised the tribe and its partners to discuss the proposal with the leaders and residents of cities, as well as community-based organizations.
Garcia speculated: "I don't think this is what the community wants."
At the same time, he noted that Tortez is "very serious about economic development opportunities for its tribal nation" and said he wants to be supportive of tribes in his district.
In response,Fisher of the Tribal Nations groupsaid the tribe and its partners welcome suggestions from the surrounding area, and want to collaborate with law enforcement and emergency services in both Riverside and Imperial counties.
While the project doesn't require approval by the counties, he said, "we want to work with them."
The team behind the proposal acknowledges they have some detractors. They said they also have received positive responses to their pitch, but they are still trying to convert that into action.
“We always feel like everybody we talk to is extremely positive about it, but it’s like we don’t know who it is that actually flips the switch,” Arrington said.
“Sometimes it just takes a while for an idea to get traction,” Lindstrom from the California Tribal Business Alliance added.
If the idea does take hold, though, they believe this prison model could be replicated for other tribes that may not rely on casinos to generate revenue, but still have specific resources to utilize, like remote property and water.
“So this could be the bellwether,” Lindstrom said.
Arrington added that finding a large piece of land that’s “clear and clean and ready to go” for these types of facilities is often a significant challenge. Tribal communities could help solve that problem.
“The tribe’s got a very unique situation out here. And many tribal communities could have that same situation,” he said. “We could probably duplicate this just about anywhere around the state.”
Rebecca Plevin reports on immigration for The Desert Sun. Reach her at rebecca.plevin@desertsun.com. Follow her on Twitter at @rebeccaplevin.
Amanda Ulrich covers Native American issues in Southern California for The Desert Sun. She is also a Report for American corps member. She can be reached at amanda.ulrich@desertsun.com.
