Captive Market

STANTON — William Bonilla is making an honest living by thinking like a criminal.

It’s a mind-set he developed manufacturing personal care products for the nation’s prison industry, where the clientele has been known to fashion weapons out of objects as innocuous as shampoo bottles.

At the urging of corrections officers and after five years of tinkering, the entrepreneur has designed a mini-toothbrush and midget safety razor that even the most creative prisoner would have trouble fashioning into a deadly shank.

Now he is looking to make them standard equipment in correctional facilities nationwide.

That’s a tall order for a small fry like Bonilla, who is seeing an increasing number of competitors vying to supply products to the fast-growing corrections industry.

Still, he scaled a giant hurdle recently when his products won approval from the California Department of Corrections, the nation’s largest prison system with more than 150,000 inmates. The decision paves the way for Bonilla’s company to bid on lucrative contracts to supply prison facilities throughout the state.

California could use the help. In 1995, 4,017 inmates and guards were assaulted in California’s 32 prisons. Nearly 40% of those attacks involved some type of weapon, mostly improvised implements forged from mundane objects, according to state statistics.

“It’s a big, big problem and a major concern in this industry,” said Bonilla, founder of Stanton-based Security Personal Care. “I’m trying to compete by building a better mousetrap.”

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To many Americans, the country’s burgeoning prison population is a frightening sign of the times. Fueled by drug-related convictions and three-strikes sentencing, the inmate population in the nation’s federal, state and local lockups swelled to 1.6 million in June 1996. The incarceration rate has doubled in the last 10 years alone, according to Department of Justice statistics.

Debates on rehabilitation versus incarceration aside, those numbers represent opportunity to entrepreneurs such as Bonilla.

Encompassing everything from food and clothing to metal detectors and barbed wire, corrections in America has become a $32-billion industry. Yet walled off from the rest of society, the market remains invisible to many outside prison walls.

“I call it the forgotten industry,” said Larry Cothran, who tests new products and technology for the California Department of Corrections. “Companies are starting to catch on to the size of this market, but there are things we need right now that we can’t get. . . . Guys like Bill Bonilla have spotted a niche and are filling it.”

A longtime razor blade salesman for Wilkinson Sword Ltd. and Schick Safety Razor Co., both purchased by Warner-Lambert Co., Bonilla left in the early 1980s to start International Shaving Systems, distributing private-label razors to supermarkets.

A chance encounter with a corrections purchasing officer opened Bonilla’s eyes to the relatively untapped market behind bars. Soon he began focusing all his energies on the prison industry, importing and distributing more than 200 personal hygiene products to corrections facilities nationwide.

“Back then, it was small potatoes to some of the majors, but it was big dollars to me,” said the 56-year-old Bonilla, whose International Shaving Systems last year posted $3 million in sales.

Still, fierce competition from other toothbrush and razor blade importers squeezed profit margins thinner and thinner. By the early 90s, Bonilla knew he wouldn’t be able to compete on price. So he began looking around for a product to separate himself from the pack.

“I knew I had to change the playing field to survive in this business,” Bonilla said. “That’s when I shut up and started listening to my customers.”

What they told him was that toothbrushes and razor blades inside prison walls are the most troublesome tandem since Bonnie and Clyde.

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Traditional-sized toothbrush handles are a favorite toiletry of prisoners who can easily whittle them into an eye-gouging pick. More vicious still is the slashing weapon created by welding a razor blade into the bristled toothbrush head with the help of a lit match.

“They can make a weapon out of practically anything,” said Doug Tolton, a materials supervisor for the Heman J. Stark Training School in Chino, which houses 2,000 hard-core offenders ages 18 to 25. “But those things are particularly nasty.”

Bonilla approached several large manufacturers about designing a safety toothbrush and razor, but was told that the market was too small for them to bother. So starting from a sketch on a cocktail napkin, he formed a separate manufacturing arm called Security Personal Care and set out to do it himself.

The process proved painfully slow as Bonilla struggled to accumulate the capital to move the project forward. There were setbacks. A salesman, not a designer, he worked with an engineer to come up with a razor design. It looked great on paper but proved unworkable after he spent thousands to produce a three-dimensional prototype.

“It looked like a tank,” said Bonilla, who finally perfected his prototypes late last year. “It was way too strong and oversized.”

Bonilla has hired a New York workshop employing mentally challenged adults to assemble the toothbrushes, which went into full-scale production early this year.

The safety toothbrush is only 3 inches long, making it more likely to be converted into a toothpick than a crude knife. The bristles are heat resistant and the handle rounded and flattened like a beaver’s tail to prevent its use as a shank.

It’s already standard equipment at the Heman J. Stark Training School, which is paying twice as much for the 25-cent miniatures as it did for standard toothbrushes.

“It costs us $5,000 to airlift someone out of here in a medical helicopter,” said Tolton, who noted that the corrections facility has experienced no toothbrush stabbings since the safety brushes were introduced this spring. “So a few pennies are well worth it.”

The razors will be produced in Stanton and are projected to hit the market this fall, when specially designed manufacturing equipment arrives from England.

Bonilla has applied for a patent on the 2 1/2-inch bantam razor. Its blade is as long as a standard shaving blade, but only three-sixteenths of an inch wide and perforated with hollow windows so that it will break into bits if tampered with.

Wade McGinley, security specialist with the Virginia Department of Corrections, said Bonilla’s razor represents the first real safety advance he’s seen in years for that basic technology. He said his agency plans to make the razor standard issue for violent, high-risk felons locked in that system’s “special housing” units when the product becomes available this fall.

“It’s just what we were looking for,” said McGinley, who could not estimate the size of the contract. “It’s going to solve one of our problems.”

In all, Bonilla says, he has commitments to sell $750,000 worth of security razors and toothbrushes this year--though not all are firm contracts. He hopes to boost that number to around $4 million in 1998 and triple his current staff of eight employees as the razor business moves into full production.

Key to that effort will be sales in California, which has one of the toughest prison product testing processes in the nation. Cothran of the California Department of Corrections said many purchasing officials in states without similar programs frequently call him to figure out what to buy.

“If a product makes it in California, it’s going to make it in all 50 states,” Cothran said. “There’s no question there’s a demand out there for what he has developed.”

Bonilla has gambled more than $500,000 in research and development capital betting that demand will translate into sales. The vagaries of the distribution side of his business have convinced him that developing his own products is the only way to go.

Last year, International Shaving Systems lost several major prison contracts after one of his suppliers could no longer provide him with hygiene products. Then the Food and Drug Administration held up a shipment of foreign toothpaste for six weeks until he secured the proper approvals.

“If you don’t have proprietary items, you’re dead,” Bonilla said. “That’s the only way to be successful. That’s the only way we’re going to grow.”

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Cell Gear

Stanton-based Security Personal Care’s line of products is designed to deter prison attacks on both inmates and guards. More than 4,000 such assaults--40% of them involving weapons--occurred during 1995 in California’s 32 prisons:

Security Personal Care at a Glance

Headquarters: Stanton

President: William Bonilla

Founded: 1992

Employees: Eight

Products: Designs and manufactures tamper-resistant personal care items for high-risk inmates

Clients: Correctional facilities in 13 states, including California

Projected 1997 sales: $750,000

Answer to Attacks

* Product: Toothbrush

Prison problem: Regular-sized toothbrush handle can be whittled to a point or the head fitted with a sharp object

SPC solution: Shortened to 3 inches, the toothbrush has a flared handle, discouraging its use as a shank; weakened shaft breaks easily if used as a weapon

* Product: Disposable razor

Prison problem: Blade can be removed and converted into weapon; hollow handle used to conceal contraband

SPC solution: Reduced blade width to 3/16 of an inch and perforated it with hollow windows so it shatters if tampered with; ultrasonically welded blade to plastic handle; designed handle with no hidden cavities and shortened it to less than 2 1/2 inches to prevent it being used as a shank

Source: Security Personal Care; Researched by MARLA DICKERSON and JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times