High-Tech Lockup : New Jail Near Castaic Almost Ready to Receive 2,800 of County’s Most Dangerous Inmates

Sometime in the next two to four months, 2,800 men will arrive in buses to live for up to a year in the hills below Castaic. Unlike many residents of the area who commute to distant jobs, the newcomers will be within walking distance of their jobs in a new bakery, print shop and textile factory. They will also have ready access to facilities for exercise, basketball games, card playing and other hobbies.

These men will not be among the hundreds who have flocked to the area in recent years to escape the perils of big city living.

Rather, their experience of the countryside will be limited to glimpses through the rectangular, 4-inch-wide bulletproof windows in their new home: a $131-million maximum-security jail complex scheduled to open soon at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho, Los Angeles County’s largest jail complex.

The men will be among the county’s most dangerous criminals. Most of them will be sent to the facility while awaiting trial or sentencing for such felonies as murder, armed robbery, assault and rape.

Relative Danger

“On a danger scale of one to 10, they are seven or better,” said county Sheriff’s Capt. Michael A. Nelson, who since April has supervised planning for the facility and who will be its director when it opens.

Called the North County Correctional Facility, the 680,000-square-foot complex will increase the jail’s population of minimum-, medium- and maximum-security inmates from about 7,500 to more than 10,000. It will about double the maximum security population to about 6,000.

The jail, east of the Golden State Freeway between Santa Clarita and Castaic, for 40 years was known as the Wayside Honor Rancho until officials changed its name in 1982 to honor the former county sheriff.

The new complex, built partly to relieve crowding in the 6,800-inmate Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, will be the latest step in the evolution of the rural, 2,865-acre jail site from a minimum-security “honor ranch” for low-risk inmates to a sophisticated, high-tech detention facility for dangerous criminals.

Sophisticated Electronics

Nelson said the new complex, which is about 98% complete, will be among the most advanced of its kind in the nation. It will incorporate the latest in electronic surveillance and automated security systems, he said, while affording inmates opportunities for work and recreation.

Located behind an existing maximum-security facility, the complex consists of four two-story detention buildings and a one-story structure connected by long corridors. Four of the buildings are divided into dormitory-style cells for 32 inmates apiece, while a fifth, “high-risk” building has 196 individual cells for the most dangerous inmates.

A “discipline” section in the high-risk building has 48 individual cells for unruly inmates who will be sent to the cells for up to 10 days at a time and allowed only an hour of exercise per week, Nelson said.

The complex has three heavily guarded outdoor exercise areas. Seven smaller ones, all covered with heavy metal mesh, are in courtyards in the inmate buildings.

TV Monitors, Cameras

From a central command post, guards will be able to see virtually every corner of the complex through 20 television monitors linked to 128 cameras posted throughout the facility’s five main buildings, Nelson said. Every door, from individual cell doors to the main entrance gates, can be electronically locked and unlocked from the command post, he said.

Using the electronic locks, guards should be able to contain inmate disturbances by instantly locking doors leading to other areas, he said.

“Anyone who thinks they can get a key from someone and get into another part of the building is sadly mistaken,” Nelson said.

Nelson said the facility’s design has nothing in common with the recently completed federal Metropolitan Detention Center downtown, from which five men escaped June 18 after cutting through metal mesh enclosing an eighth-floor recreation area. The men, who were awaiting trial or sentencing for federal crimes, used a rope made of bedsheets to lower themselves to the street. One of them was arrested several hours after the escape, another was arrested Sunday; the other three remain at large.

Heavier Screen

“We have no design similarities with their operation,” Nelson said. “Our screening in outdoor recreation areas is considerably heavier than the screening they use.”

In case of fire, a computer connected to alarms will automatically print out instructions showing the quickest route to the blaze, Nelson said.

The jail is more than a high-tech detention center, Nelson said. It also puts inmates to work to save the county money and to develop occupational skills that they may be able to use after their sentences end, he said.

Inmates working in a new, 10,000-square-foot bakery will bake 25,000 loaves of bread every day for 22,000 inmates in the county’s eight jails, Nelson said. Others will be put to work in a 19,000-square-foot sewing shop to manufacture T-shirts and underwear for inmates, and some inmates will work in a print shop producing crime report forms and other documents used by the Sheriff’s Department, he said.

‘Keep a Man Busy’

“Obviously, if you can keep a man busy, give him a job, it’s better for him--and for us, too,” Nelson said.

In addition to putting inmates to work, the complex will employ 368 uniformed guards and 144 paid cooks, bakers, clerks and other personnel to supervise inmate workers, Nelson said. The Sheriff’s Department is accepting applications for many of those positions, he said.

Nelson said planners designed the complex using suggestions from guards and captains at other county jails. He said the design should prevent a repeat of the March, 1985, jailbreak in which seven inmates, including one murderer, escaped from the existing maximum-security unit, which was built in 1957.

The escaped murderer burglarized a home in nearby Bouquet Canyon before authorities arrested him in downtown Los Angeles. Five of the other escapees were captured not far from the jail.

Little Opposition

Despite the escapes, news that nearly 3,000 additional high-risk criminals will be moving into the area apparently has not stirred community opposition. Several homeowners who live across the freeway from the jail said in interviews that they are not worried that inmates might escape and commit crimes in their neighborhood.

“I’m really not worried about it,” said Bill Straughan, who lives with his wife and two young daughters in a neighborhood north of Hasley Canyon Road. “It’s full-security, and so is my home--we have an alarm. By expanding it out here, they’ll save taxpayers money. They’re going to have to put it somewhere.”

Straughan added, however, that he worries about additional traffic from people visiting inmates. And he wants the jail to change its practice of releasing inmates at the jail’s main entrance. If no one is there to pick up the inmates, he said, they might wander into the neighborhood and commit crimes.

Resident Andy Swanson, a California Highway Patrol officer, said he does not welcome the new inmates.

“It’s something to think about,” he said. “Even the way it is right now, it’s a constant thought. If they ever escape, where are they going to go?”