January 21, 1982

For four months, New York City corrections officials have released prisoners from the Rikers Island jail complex for part of each workday to serve on crews that clean and rehabilitate parks. The Koch administration was initially concerned about the reaction in affected neighborhoods, and so while officials are now eag er to discuss the program, they made no public anno uncement when it started. The prisoners were all serving sentences of no more than 90 days and were all convicted of misdemeanor charges. Working in teams of 12 to 15 and accompanied by two guards armed with .38-cali ber revolvers, they have raked leaves, painted benches and carted of f trash in three parks and a recreation center in Brooklyn.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating possible insider trading in the stock of Dean Witter Reynolds Organization Inc. before its takeover last October by Sears, Roebuck & Company, according to sources familiar with the investigation. It could not be learned who the targets of the investigation are. Public records show heavy trading in Dean Witter options and stock in the days before the $607 million acquisition.

LOFT and apartment residents often find themselves in a similar predicament: They want to alter their space, by opening up one area to another, by putting up a wall to get privacy or by creating dualpurpose areas. The designers and architects who apply them selves to these problems, in both flexible loft areas and apa rtments divided more rigidly into partitioned rooms, appear to be most successful when their strategies revolve around innovative us e of doors, partitions and walls. The renovation of the Chelsea loft that belongs to Jack Brusca, the painter and jewelry designer, is a case in point. Despite its single row of windows with a southern exposure, little daylight reached the kitchen, 100 feet away. Besides coping with this situation, Raul Rosas, the architect in charge, also needed to find a way to separate the bedroom from the open living area.

If this country's political leaders had to run for office, they could easily point to their record in fighting inflation. Since 1975, when inflation was running over 35 percent, the rate plummeted to just over 10 percent in 1977, and has been held under 5 percent in the four years since. Government spending has held steady for three years running. And economic growth has averaged 21.4 percent a year since 1975.

The United States economy is in steep recession, with the gross national product falling at a 5.2 percent rate in the latest quarter. Inflation has declined steadily for nearly two years, and unemployment seems to have replaced rising prices as the nation's biggest economic worry. Yet interest rates, which traditionally have tracked both economic activity and the inflation rate, are not going down. They did so for a couple of months last fall but, since about Thanksgiving, the rates have been rising sharply. Some economists predict they are headed back to last year's record levels.