Prisoners Welcome Their Return to Mira Loma Jail

Chained together in clusters, 159 inmates stepped off three Sheriff’s Department buses and returned Friday to the Mira Loma Detention Facility in the Antelope Valley, three days after budgetary brinkmanship had sent them packing for other jails.

The inmates were stripped and searched, as always, but this time the scene at the former airfield west of Lancaster was more like a homecoming.

As inmates lined up outside the jail’s north gate, staffers and some earlier arrivals were still unpacking inside.

No one was complaining.

Following a roller coaster week during which the jail was played like a pawn in a fiscal power game, life at Mira Loma should soon return to normal. Lt. Bill Postmus said female inmates are expected to return Saturday, and other male inmates should continue to trickle in until the medium-security jail’s population swells to 900 inmates.

“Good to be back. Good to be back,” an inmate said, beaming broadly as he returned just before Friday’s lunch of chili and macaroni. His sentiments were shared by many other inmates and 170 staffers, who agreed that if one has to work or do time in a Los Angeles County jail, it’s best to be at Mira Loma.

“I’ve worked at five of our jails and this is one of the nicest I’ve worked in. Even the inmates seem very low-keyed here,” Sgt. Arlouise White said.

“I feel better,” said Stephen Moore, a 19-year-old inmate from Lakewood. Before his hasty departure Tuesday, he’d been at Mira Loma since February, serving a sentence for assault. After spending three days in the more crowded and restrictive Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic, he said he’s glad to be serving the final two weeks of his sentence at Mira Loma.

“If you want to do your time in peace, this is the place to go,” Moore said. “There is too much tension everywhere else. There’s all kinds of fights and racial tension. Here you don’t have to worry about people really messing with you.”

At Mira Loma, inmates enjoy liberal yard privileges and can learn trades. One of the most popular classes among its 500 female inmates is dog grooming, complete with “volunteers” from a nearby animal shelter, White said. The facility also offers rehabilitation services such as drug and alcohol counseling and parenting classes, as well as literacy, English as a second language and general education classes for high school diploma equivalency.

Even if Mira Loma is an oasis for inmates and staff, its future remains clouded.

During last year’s budget crisis, the inmate population was scaled back from a maximum capacity of 1,089 men and 850 women to about 400 men and 500 women.

Sheriff Sherman Block closed Mira Loma at midday Tuesday, saying his department did not have $5 million it needed to keep all the jails open. County supervisors threatened to sue. Hours later, following a closed-door meeting with the supervisors, Block agreed to keep Mira Loma open--for now--under a compromise in which the supervisors agreed to a $4-million emergency infusion for the jails if Block comes up with $1 million in cuts.

It may be a temporary reprieve. Mira Loma remains at the top of the closure list as county officials grapple with an estimated $1.4-billion budget shortfall because of its small size and distant location. The jail, and others, could close in August if there are massive state and county budget cutbacks.

If so, it would not be the first time budget woes have mothballed Mira Loma. The facility also shut down in 1979 for four years in the wake of Proposition 13.