Agency Eases Life for Prison Visitors

No blue jeans allowed here, and cleavage must be kept under wraps. Purses, on the other hand, have to be see-through. Legs may be visible, but only from the mid-thigh down.

Such are the requirements for going to state prison--as a visitor.

As if visiting an incarcerated loved one isn’t trying enough, there are pages of rules that dictate not only a person’s attire but even the number of times a prisoner and his or her visitor may embrace and kiss during a visit--once on arrival and once when saying goodby.

Enter Centerforce, a private nonprofit agency that offers prison visitors everything from a cup of coffee to bus fare home to a shirt to cover any nonconforming cleavage. Among the most important offerings are child care--minors are not allowed inside the prison without their birth certificate--and a willingness to listen without passing judgment.

“When people get sent to prison, there are so many other people that are victimized,” said Annette Lorenzo, program director for Centerforce at one of California’s newest prisons, California State Prison Los Angeles County. “We support the family.”

Shortly after the first inmates arrived at the $207-million Lancaster prison early this year, Lorenzo opened the Centerforce office in temporary quarters on the prison grounds. It operates with an annual budget of $52,000 in government grants.

Already hundreds of visitors to the high desert prison have received assistance from Centerforce in the six months since the Lancaster facility opened, said Lorenzo, the agency’s sole employee.

A child-care provider is expected to start working at Centerforce later this week and a van driver has been hired, Lorenzo said.

The Centerforce in Lancaster is hoping for volunteers to share the work, such as reading children stories, as well as donors willing to augment the operation’s budget.

The Centerforce network consists of about two dozen sites at state prisons throughout California. Centerforce was started nearly two decades ago at “The House” in San Quentin Village, which has served the inmate visitors at the infamous Bay Area prison since 1975.

In 1982, passage of Assembly Bill 1512 required the state Department of Corrections to contract with a private nonprofit agency to operate visitor centers at all adult prisons with more than 300 inmates. Centerforce is the largest agency operating the centers, serving more than 2 million visitors since 1975.

In 1993, Centerforce expects to serve an additional 250,000 prison inmate visitors, including 65,000 children, said Peter Breen, executive director of the San Quentin-based agency.

The Lancaster facility is expected to be among the most heavily used of the 25 centers because of its proximity to Los Angeles, he said. Once the Lancaster site is fully operational, it will probably serve about 1,500 of the 4,000 visitors who come to the Lancaster prison each month, officials said.

The number of visitors is expected to increase as the prison population grows from the current 3,400 inmates to about 4,200.

Providing clothing to visitors to comply with prison regulations is the most frequent service Centerforce provides at prisons statewide, Breen said.

“I’ve clothed the same person three or four times,” Lorenzo said. “I don’t understand it. A lot of them are traveling (hundreds) of miles. Maybe their planning doesn’t allow for it. Maybe their life doesn’t allow it.”

Transportation between the prison and bus and train depots is the second-most-common service, followed by child care, Breen said.

Mike Yarborough, an associate warden at the Lancaster prison, said Centerforce plays a necessary role.

“They’re a viable link, an important conduit between the inmates and their families,” he said. Visitors are allowed at the Lancaster prison Thursdays to Sundays and holidays.

There have already been memorable experiences in the short time Centerforce has been open in Lancaster, Lorenzo said.

One inmate may still be trying to explain to his wife why another woman, posing as his wife, was trying to arrange a conjugal visit with him. Lorenzo said she provided clothing to the woman posing as the man’s wife and did not learn she was an impostor until the next weekend, when the inmate’s real wife needed to borrow some clothes.

One common problem Centerforce cannot solve is the requirement for a minor to have a birth certificate in order to see an inmate, who is usually the child’s father.

Just last week, a grandmother brought the child of her incarcerated son to the prison for a visit but did not have the birth certificate. The woman, who had driven some distance to the remote prison, screamed about “the injustice” of not being allowed with the child inside the prison, a situation that Centerforce could do nothing to resolve.

Lorenzo offers reading, arts, music and health activities for children to make the experience more positive for children.

“How much worse of an experience can a child have than to see their father locked up?” she asked.

She encourages visiting children to keep a journal to express their emotions about seeing their fathers in prison. And she intends to loan mothers recorded tapes on being a good parent.

The offerings will grow this week with the addition of the van driver and child-care provider, Lorenzo said.

Last week, Lancaster’s Centerforce moved from a small office to a temporary single-wide trailer with enough room to serve coffee and provide activities for children. Breen said the Lancaster operation should have its permanent double-wide trailer by year’s end.

“I’m really hoping that Los Angeles County just welcomes us,” Lorenzo said. “That there’s lots of fiscal support, lots of volunteers.”