Is the wall of political indifference to California's very troubled prison system - a barrier erected by the very powerful union that represents those who guard inmates - finally crumbling?

Two events late last week indicate that, finally, those we elect to manage the state's affairs are giving long-overdue attention to a system beset by skyrocketing labor costs, poisonous labor-management relations and an evident code of silence about prisoner abuse and other wrongdoing.

A legislative committee opened hearings Thursday on the sweetheart labor contract that the Gray Davis administration signed with the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) - a union that spent millions of dollars to elect Davis governor in 1998. One salient fact that emerged is that the contract is much more lucrative than the administration estimated at the time because of semisecret provisions. It could cost four times as much as the half-billion dollar estimate.

The man who ousted Davis in last fall's recall election, Arnold Schwarzenegger, on Friday appointed a blue-ribbon commission headed by former Gov. George Deukmejian to do a top-to-bottom review of the state's youth and adult corrections systems and recommend changes to improve their efficiency and culture.

Deukmejian was elected governor on a law-and-order platform in 1982 and began the expansion of the prison system - a background that raises questions in some critics - but he probably has the most unsullied reputation for personal integrity of any major California political figure, which should be reassuring that the review won't be a whitewash.

Tellingly, both Schwarzenegger and commission members said they would delve into the code of silence that is the most galling feature of the current system. As the commission was being announced Friday, the Los Angeles Times was reporting that officers at Corcoran State Prison, one of the most troubled institutions, were refusing to cooperate with an investigation of an inmate death.

"We have no restrictions," said review panel member Joseph Gunn, a former Los Angeles policeman and director of that city's police commission. "There are no boundaries."

Journalistic and official accounts of prison problems have been accumulating for years, but they were given short shrift by the Davis administration and legislators, clearly due to the influence of the CCPOA, which had become arguably the state's single most powerful political interest during the 1980s and 1990s as the prison system expanded rapidly.

CCPOA and its leader, Don Novey, pumped millions of dollars into political campaigns, both to elect politicians deemed to be pro-union and defeat those considered to be hostile. The union built a massive headquarters building, from which it dispatched lobbyists, dispersed political money and conducted advertising campaigns about walking "the toughest beat in the state." It also underwrote several "victims' rights" groups that provided the public pressure for ever-tougher sentencing laws and gave seed money for the "three strikes, you're out" ballot measure that increased the prison population by many thousands.

CCPOA has never been shy about its goals. It wanted tougher sentencing laws to send more felons to prison, which then would increase pressures to build more institutions and hire more union members to guard the inmates. Over the last quarter-century, the inmate population has expanded from about 20,000 to about 160,000, with commensurate increases in financing and Department of Corrections employees.

At the same time, through contract negotiations and direct legislation, CCPOA sought and got ever-fatter contracts and protections for its members from those who might investigate wrongdoing. It's only a slight stretch to conclude that those who guarded inmates - in a kind of reverse Stockholm syndrome - often adopted the prison culture itself. The code of silence and heavy pressure on CDC administrators to overlook wrongdoing have been documented repeatedly.

Schwarzenegger, in a statement, said he wants the new commission to show how the state can improve prison culture and ethics. We'll hold him to that. It's time for the cover-ups to end.