In the town of Live Oak, in the shadow of the Sutter Buttes, Roberto Ruiz lives with a prison just a few feet from his backyard.

His neighbor is the Leo Chesney Community Correctional Facility, a minimum-security women's prison. But the 42-year-old construction worker said he's never had a problem with the prison's 300 inmates.

"They're good neighbors," he said.

While residents of the small Yolo County town of Madison are worried sick about a proposal to build a new prison nearby, neighbors of the Chesney facility have had few complaints.

Chesney is similar in many ways to the re-entry prisons planned for Madison and other locations throughout the state, said Carole Hood, chief deputy secretary at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Chesney's small population of inmates study in portable classrooms, bunk in open dorms and raise organic produce in colorful gardens.

Inmates are counseled against substance abuse and take anger management and family relationship classes. They also train for careers as cooks, cable technicians and landscapers.

It's all meant to keep them from returning to California's overcrowded prison system.

Re-entry prisons, which will house up to 500 inmates each, are also intended to rehabilitate felons nearing parole by offering intensive education, counseling and vocational training in unconventional prison settings.

But in a number of counties, Yolo among them, plans to build the new prisons have met resistance.

Corrections officials chalk it up to a not-in-my-backyard attitude. They hope the example of the Chesney prison might change some minds.

Bordered on three sides by residential neighborhoods, the prison is operated by Cornell Cos., a private contractor, in conjunction with the state's department of corrections.

Its inmates, many transferred from larger prisons, are in the final year or two of their sentences.

Chesney is different from the planned re-entry prisons in at least two important ways.

Re-entry prisons are expected to house mostly male offenders, including serious and violent felons. Chesney accepts only women who have committed lower-level crimes.

And Chesney looks like an elementary school surrounded by razor wire. The re-entry prisons, designed in California mission or ranch style, will contain inmates without guard towers or perimeter fences.

The programs at Chesney, however, are similar to what will be offered in the new facilities.

That's the point state officials want to get across to communities like Madison, where residents are concerned about safety, home values and preserving their small-town way of life.

In a substance-abuse session at Chesney last week, a dozen women wearing white T-shirts and blue jeans sat in a circle with a counselor, passing around family photos.

They talked of children and grandchildren and their longing to be with them.

Anna Urbiana, 44, is doing time for assault. She said she hadn't seen her family for four and half years, but her daughters and mother were planning to visit soon. She was hoping to see her 6-month-old grandson for the first time.

Urbiana said the drug-treatment program, with its emphasis on trust and sharing among inmates, has helped her change.

"I'm going back into society and never coming back," she said.

At Chesney, inmates grow vegetables in the prison gardens, while others learn to cook them in culinary classes taught by an instructor from the local community college.

In another classroom, a group of women learned the fine points of installing fiber optics and coaxial cable.

Upon graduation, inmates can be certified as entry-level cable technicians, with jobs starting at around $20 an hour, said instructor Patty Henderson.

LaJoy Smith, 47, of Los Angeles said she intends to go into the delicate work of splicing fiber-optic cables. She hopes her conviction for forgery won't get in the way.

Physical conditioning also is a part of the curriculum. In the prison gym, inmates went through a grueling workout to a Tae Bo video on a big-screen television.

Fawn Butrick, 29, from Rocklin, said she had lost 90 pounds since June through "determination and consistency."

She said she'd been a drug user and had never exercised before coming to Chesney.

"I wanted to make changes so I could live productively on the outside," said Butrick, who was serving a sentence for passing counterfeit bills. "I was lucky the opportunity was here for me."

Instructor Gary Reedy said it's not just about exercise, but "about setting goals, reaching goals and feeling good."

Reedy recalled a woman who cried when he handed her a certificate for completing a class. She told him it was the first thing she had ever finished in her life.

Call The Bee's Hudson Sangree, (916) 321-1191.