Jail: The Citizen Academy Visits O.C.'s Central Jail Complex

Jail is all about segregation and safety. By California law (Penal Code § 4000), it’s the job of the Sheriff to staff county jails by confining and ensuring the safety of suspects awaiting trial or adjudication, witnesses needed for criminal trial but likely to flee, people found in contempt, defendants found guilty of a crime, and former inmates in violation of parole.

Our County jails also confine—by county contract with the Federal Dept. of Homeland Security/Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) agency--illegal immigrants apprehended for a variety of legal offenses.

The Citizen Academy toured the Central Jail Complex (CJX), a Santa Ana facility that consists of 4 institutions in one: Central Men’s Jail, Central Women’s Jail, Intake & Release Center (IRC), and the Transportation Bureau, all within a maximum security facility. About 650 deputies operate the CJX 24/7. San Clemente’s former Chief of Police, Paul D’Auria, is the Captain in charge of the facility.

The CJX is a fascinatingly creepy place filled with lots of dangerous and disturbed people.  Both within the prison environment and from the community at large, inmates are separated from people they might harm and who might harm them. Some inmates are isolated and housed in padded cells to prevent them from injuring themselves.

It was dusk when our Academy bus arrived at the jail. My classmates and I were eager to start the tour. The outside of the CJX building is fairly drab, gray, and unremarkable, trimmed with a wide grassy area, trees, and a broad sidewalk. The neighborhood was especially quiet and peaceful for being in the heart of a dense, downtown environment. 

But this was not Club Med. That became unmistakably clear during the classroom orientation and ½ hour later when we walked outside to the gates of the Intake/Release Center (IRC), the first step for booking new inmates.

Towering high above us were sturdy metal gates topped with interlocking loops of razor wire. Razor wire is not a slinky. I tried to imagine climbing over the gates. Even if one made it to the top, I thought, the razor wire is looped so tightly that only insects could traverse them. While there are lots of pigeons & other birds in Santa Ana, there was no guano atop these gates.

We were escorted by San Clemente’s Chief of Police, Lt. John Coppock, San Clemente’s Community Liaison Officer Joe Bull, and once inside, at least two other, highly vigilant Sheriff deputies at all times. We were constantly counted and re-counted as a group of twenty-five. I felt watched but I also felt secure (meaning not susceptible to harm, as opposed to happy and content).

The environment was controlled in every way. From the air we breathed to the outermost barrier and every internal junction, the Central Men’s Jail Complex is controlled and compartmentalized by 2 sets of gates, or 2 sets of doors, and sometimes by a combination of bars and security glass.

The space between the doors and gates creates a buffer zone so there’s never just one door between two areas (remember the Get Smart opening sequence?). Compartmentalization is a tactical safety strategy to prevent large numbers of inmates from aggregating simultaneously. Think dog park gates on steroids.

Upon walking through the outermost razor-wired double gates, we entered the Intake and Release Center via, again, a double set of doors. Throughout the CJX, the second door never opens until the deputies signal that the first door behind us is securely closed.  

The internal air was comfortably warm, but heavy. It’s re-circulated so the facility does not exchange outside air with inside air. That’s also a product of jail security, as it’s important to prevent an external but adjacent fire or toxic gas from forcing evacuation of the jail and thereby exposing the community to loose inmates or creating a panic within the incarcerated population.

Modern jails and procedures are designed to minimize contact between deputies and inmates. When there is planned contact, deputies wear surgical gloves. They are vaccinated against Hepatitis B, since inmate populations are higher-than-normal carriers of that virus and deputies are at great risk of harm.

Jail deputies do not carry guns. Before entry into the IRC, all officers must remove their guns and place them in keyed mini-lockers. No officers are permitted to bring guns into the jail so as to avoid the weapons being taken by inmates. When necessary, other, non-lethal tools are used just as effectively to physically suppress combative inmates.

During our orientation, CJX deputies showed us a variety of correctional facility weaponry and explained how and why each is used. Here’s a list of a few of them:

• Batons: long, heavy, wood sticks

• Plexiglas shields: the concave side faces the inmate and is used to pin him against a wall

• Tazer guns

• Chemical weapons (which require a gas mask for deputies)
  • Chemical spray guns
  • Pepperball guns (like paintball guns but filled with concentrated pepper spray)
  • Tear-gas bombs

• Non-lethal grenades

• Rubber bullet arms: the bullets are more like musket balls, but made of dense rubber

• Less lethal blunt impact weapons: these look like a sturdy plastic Tommy Gun that launches a large diameter heavy plastic foam projectile to knock the targeted person on his ass just long enough so deputies can reestablish control. They’re usually fired from less than 40 feet away. They can be lethal. 

At the Intake/Release Center (IRC), inmates first undergo a triage process: a thorough search by jail officers, blood draw if necessary to detect drugs or alcohol, evaluation for mental and physical illness, a chest x-ray to screen for tuberculosis, photographs, and finger-printing. 

The IRC holding cells are barricaded using heavy, thick, security glass, not bars. There were anywhere from about ½ dozen to a dozen men in those cells and most were standing. The toilet is about 4 feet from the glass barricade. Some inmates were alone and separated from others.

Importantly, the IRC classifies prisoners by their propensity for violence, affiliation with gangs, criminal sophistication, social compatibility, mental and physical stability, and potential for being victimized by other inmates. 

Classification is represented by a wristband in one of the following five colors: 

• White = minimal physical risk to himself and others. White banders are eligible to do in-prison jobs like cleaning and cooking. 

• Yellow = slightly greater risk, e.g., someone with prior prison time, a known gang member, or arrested for a more serious charge. Also, when white band prisoners are allowed to work in the prison cafeteria, they’re automatically re-categorized to a yellow band because of their increased mobility privileges and access to kitchen tools.

• Orange = greater risk than yellow.

• Red = used for a maximum risk prisoner, dangerous enough to require housing in a solitary cell. Officially known as an administrative segregation inmate, he has very limited movement within the facility. Usually he’s a violent person (often a gang member) who is likely to attempt assault upon staff or other inmates. These people are always escorted by at least 2 deputies, fixed with leg irons and wrist-to-waist chains.

• Blue = used for an inmate placed in protective custody because the general prison population may assault or kill him. Often this prisoner is accused of sexual predation, crimes against kids, is known as an informer for law enforcement, or is an ex-gangbanger who no longer wants to be associated with the gang. A blue-band inmate is always escorted by at least one deputy and is housed in a single-man cell only.

• Striped = to denote an immigration detainee, all of the above risk colors have white stripes.

Our Academy group witnessed a variety of incarceration techniques. The classic-movie, linear cell-block with bars is no longer preferred, though that floor plan persists in older facilities like the CJX, which was opened in 1968. 

Parts of the Central Men’s Jail have been upgraded to the more modern pod-type housing. Think of the pod being shaped like a tall wedge of bundt cake, with the tip cut off and replaced with thick security glass from floor to ceiling. There are several advantages to that arrangement.

• Officer security: Deputies are securely positioned outside the pod (in the center of the cake), providing a visually unobstructed view of inmates on the other side of the glass, even when a pod is multi-level. 

• Efficiency: Pods can be arranged adjacent each other, but still monitored by the same number of deputies in the center.

• Control: Pod inmates are separate from other pods and cell blocks. That design is more controlled and secure, since each pod houses a discrete group of prisoners.

• Phone: The pod has a telephone on the wall from which inmates can make collect calls.

• Internal movement: There are also stationary tables and stools in the pod’s common area, which provides inmates a certain amount of freedom to move.

• Shower: There is a shower in each pod. The shower has no door and the only visual separation between it and the deputies is a central stretch of stainless steel. Deputies can watch the showering prisoner’s head and feet simultaneously.

Each cell has its own toilet, though for pod housing there is a toilet in the common area. The common area toilet is about 15 feet from the glass observation wall. The toilet is stainless steel, much like those in beach bathrooms.

There is no privacy for inmates on the potty, either in the jail or in the IRC. I asked why the duplication of pod toilet facilities exists. The answer: to allow inmates to avoid a #2 in a cell shared with another prisoner. While some readers may question that privilege, if an additional potty helps deputies keep the peace, that’s safer for them and everyone else. 

Padded isolation cells exist for inmates who are suicidal or who present an unpredictable danger to themselves or jail staff. Those prisoners are placed in padded cells only following a psychological evaluation. Access was through a heavy, metal-plate door, reinforced with rivets, with a small glass window for monitoring. We walked past those cells, but were not able to look inside any because they were occupied. Some inmates, though, were peering through the glass. 

There is no toilet in padded cells, just a hole covered with a grate in the floor. The grate is designed to let the tootsie rolls drop through, but prevent the inmate’s hands from entering the sewer. The toilet is flushed remotely by deputies as inmates are checked frequently throughout the day. Padded cells have no bathing facility, either, because the prisoner’s behavior cannot be predicted.

During the orientation presentation, we were told to anticipate the smell, a combination of feces, urine, people in tight places, and disinfectant. The more warped inmates are known to throw the only thing they can truly call their own: digested remnants of yesterday’s meals.

But our Academy group was lucky. We weren’t exposed to that experience, nor were we within reach of any metabolized projectiles. When we walked the men’s cell block, thick security glass, a hallway, and finally, cell bars adjacent the inmates, separated our space from theirs, a distance of about 15 feet.

We were also warned to expect exhibitionist and provocative inmate behaviors. Some members of our group witnessed frontal nudity flashes and I saw a guy pacing his cell with his hands shoved in the front of his pants. One muscular dude in solitary lunged at his bars as we passed by. 

Back at the IRC, I noticed some of the features of the holding cells:

• each cell has several concrete platforms about 5-feet long and three feet wide for resting (but no pillows or blankets or mattresses that I saw)

• a stainless steel toilet in plain view of the glass enclosure about 4 feet away

• a telephone on the wall

• dozens of stickers on the glass advertising bail bond companies, and foreign consulate phone numbers for every country on the planet

• prisoners use a roll of toilet paper for a pillow.

Comfort, privacy, mental or physical sanctuary does not exist here—by design. Many of these people have devastated other people’s lives . . . or worse.

My thoughts wandered to those sentenced to decades or life in prison. I imagined myself in that situation. No Foxy, no Barry, no bicycle, no wind in my face, no cool green grass to walk on during a hot summer day, no sand between my toes, no smell of sage from the backcountry trails, no sky, no hugs, no kisses. To never again hear a cat purr, or a hawk scream, or the waves crash.

Thinking about the deprivation made my tear ducts hurt. Total, complete boredom and absence of purpose. This is not a political statement: the death penalty would be a gift. 

As we walked slowly through the triage area, inmates to one side and Sheriffs to the other, we listened closely to officers explain how they do things and why. It occurred to me that, were it not for the security glass, we would easily be within inmates’ reach.

Some of them snuff out lives the way we extinguish candles. 

We were the focus of attention, and prisoners looked at us with a sort of depressed curiosity. We looked at them, too, but I think I can speak for my classmates when I say that we averted our gazes to a certain degree. Maybe it was out of respect, but I don’t know for sure.

I, for one, tried not to stare, even though I wanted to make detailed mental notes on the cell contents, inmates’ expressions, proximity to each other, their clothing, posture, and behavior. I kept my eyes moving because I felt badly for their circumstances, despite my gratitude for the officers who put them there and the sheriffs that escorted us and diligently answered our questions. 

As we stood listening to the deputy explaining how the IRC processing system works, a couple of prisoners in handcuffs were brought in behind us. They were instructed to each stand on a single, blue floor tile (the rest of the floor is white), face the wall, don’t talk, and spread their legs. Two sheriff deputies wearing latex gloves performed a detailed search of the prisoners’ torsos, limbs, and clothing. I was embarrassed to watch. 

Despite the fact that the Sheriffs doing the search were extremely professional in handling those suspects, I could feel the degradation of the human condition. Ten feet from those new suspects were dozens more like them watching from behind the security glass. Navigating the labyrinth of the CJX, we would see hundreds more. The recidivism rate is 65%.

A tremendous amount of money, effort, planning, and manpower is expended to preemptively control violent people within the walls of the Complex. I wish we didn’t have to spend money on such institutions. Schools would be better if we didn’t have so many criminals. And I wish places like this didn’t have to exist. But clearly they do. The job of the Sheriff is to keep our communities safe, not to fix the broken lives that threaten us all.

Taking all this in, by the time we got to our bus an hour or two later, I had tears in my eyes (I do now as I write this). I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I am to not be in those inmates’ shoes, to have had a Mom that loved me, worked hard and fed me, and made me do my homework, practice the damned piano, read books and learn to write, grammatically diagram sentences, memorize vocabulary words, and the summer after the fifth grade, read the entire Golden Book Encyclopedia A to Z—out loud!—while Mom pulled weeds in the garden. I thought I was in hell.

But in retrospect, hell is not having someone to love you, spend time with you, and sacrifice for you when you’re a kid. Then, I suppose, you grow up to make your own hell. Maybe because you didn’t have the role models to show you a better path, so your default becomes a series of bad decisions that encase you in concrete, parallel bars, and Plexiglas cages with demented minds and perverted hands.

While I grew to appreciate my Mom’s sacrifices, my great teachers at Garden Grove High School, and Garden Grove P.D. Sgt. Lynn Heywood who encouraged me to focus on school and sports, never touch drugs, and who came to watch my hockey and softball games, now I know that my childhood was heaven.

So is San Clemente.

Thank you Sheriffs, Chief Coppock, Officer Bull, and the City Council for making this class possible, even though I found this very painful to write.