DATE: Wednesday, August 27, 1997            TAG: 9708270555

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   26 lines

PRISON OFFICIALS WILL NOT ALLOW ACLU TO TOUR FELONS' FACILITY

The Virginia Department of Corrections has refused a request by the American Civil Liberties Union to tour a prison building to check for unacceptable living conditions.

In a departure from past practice, Assistant Attorney General Collins J. Hite refused requests for a tour of Powhatan Correctional Center's M Building, which houses violent, misbehaving felons.

In past decades, ACLU lawyers have been allowed to tour Virginia prisons even when the lawyers had announced they were considering lawsuits against the prisons, said Al Bronstein, founder of the ACLU's National Prison Project.

``It suggests ... they have something to hide,'' Bronstein said.

But Corrections Department spokesman David Botkins said the ACLU lawyers were refused access for their own safety.

``We don't give tours of M building to anybody,'' Botkins said. ``It's a prison within a prison for some of the hardest, most violent predatory felons in the system and it's not a place where we give tours for the safety of both staff and those touring.''

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