Help Sought to Halt Racial Melees at Jail

Los Angeles County jail authorities, so far unable to halt racial strife at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho near Castaic, said Tuesday they will turn to human relations experts and the state prison system for advice.

Since June at least 120 inmates have been injured in a series of 10 fights between black and Latino inmates, the most recent of them Monday.

Assistant Sheriff Richard Foreman praised efforts by Pitchess officials to stem the violence, but said the department will consult the state prison system and the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission.

“We have basically a cop focus on this, and maybe we need to get another point of view,” Foreman said.

Fights Saturday and Monday involved entire jail dormitories--more than 200 inmates in all--and sent several inmates to hospitals with minor wounds from homemade weapons.

Experts around the state, both within and outside the penal administration, said that if the underlying animosities are not resolved, the violence will continue and probably escalate. They said such conflicts are particularly hard to conquer in dormitory-style accommodations such as those prevalent at Pitchess.

“You just can’t monitor the kind of mass conflict that can take place, and you can’t protect people in that environment,” said Craig Haney, a psychology professor at UC Santa Cruz who has written extensively about prison conditions.

All 10 of the fights at Pitchess began as seemingly minor squabbles between two inmates, sometimes over money, a card game or the use of telephones. But the disputes quickly took on a racial overtones and fighting spread.

County jail officials originally denied that race was a major factor in the melees, but in September they said that the violence resulted from a shift in the jail population from black to Latino predominance. They said that change, which occurred in mid-1988, left the two racial groups fighting for internal control of the jail.

Foreman said rapid turnover of inmates in the county jail makes it difficult to identify chronic troublemakers and separate them.

Opinions varied widely among prison experts on what should be done to quell the violence.

Some suggested increased vigilance and control by jail guards, while others said more exercise and classes for inmates would relieve tension caused by too much idle time in dormitories. A few recommended segregating activities, such as phone use, by race, although most said that would be unconstitutional and ineffective.

“It might solve the problem temporarily, but later within the race you’d have people trying to take control . . . you’d have gangs against gangs,” said Paul Comiskey, an attorney with the Prisoners Rights Union, a Sacramento-based inmate advocacy organization.

In September, county jail officials said they were taking steps to solve the problem, ranging from more contact between correctional officers and inmates to stronger punishment for the perpetrators. Because control of a bank of telephones had been the catalyst for at least four fights, a bunk-by-bunk telephone schedule was devised, said David Hagthrop, commander of the East Facility, where the most recent fights occurred.

Hagthrop said inmates are invited to participate in activities ranging from literacy classes to jail cleanup to drug counseling, but estimated that they spend up to 16 hours a day in the dorms.