Spending Christmas Behind Bars

Only one tune seemed to be missing Sunday from holiday carols serenading the crowd lined up near Santa Claus in Castaic: “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

Good thing too. The hundreds of families waiting for visitors day to begin at the Los Angeles County Jail didn’t need any reminding that husbands and fathers locked up inside aren’t coming home any time soon.

The last visitors day before Christmas was a bittersweet one for those on both sides of the wall at the Pitchess Detention Center, inmate population 8,400.

“It’s going to be tough,” admitted Los Angeles resident Judy Larry--speaking for most of those in line behind her as she bundled her daughters Willisha, 5, Unique, 2, and Queshawn, 1, aboard the bus that would take them up the hill to where their father has been locked up since June.

Deep inside the triple-locked doors of the concrete-walled North County Correctional Facility on the hill, inmate Henry Silva agreed.

“It hurts. I wish I could be with my son on Christmas,” said Silva, a burly, 34-year-old Glendale construction worker who has been locked up since June on a spousal abuse charge.

“He’s 4. I cried when my cousin brought him here last week to see me. He kissed me through the glass.”

December is a melancholy month on both sides of the visitors gate at the Pitchess Center--the site in recent years of repeated racial brawls between rival groups of prisoners.

“Tensions tend to drop this time of year,” said Cmdr. Steve Day, who heads the 2,260-acre detention center. “This is the time of year the inmates get depressed. They’re thinking of being home with their families for Christmas and New Year’s.”

Their families feel the same way. And that explains why Christmas carols were being played to cheer up visiting adults and Santa Claus was offering hugs and ho-ho-ho’s to children on Sunday.

Members of the Santa Clarita Valley-Newhall Optimist Club brought the music and Santa. They also brought thousands of books and toys--some store-bought, others handmade by county jail prisoners.

“For some, this may be the only toys they’ll get this Christmas,” said Dee Gadbury, a retired Canyon Country advertising saleswoman who is the club’s president.

“These kids are innocent victims. Their fathers are in jail and there may be no income for the family.”

Sheriff’s officials helped the Optimists serve coffee, hot chocolate and milk and cookies to families in an outdoor waiting area, a place that more closely resembles the entrance to an amusement park than a jail.

Up to half a million adults and children pass through each year to visit inmates. The one-hour meetings take place through glass windows and telephones.

“For a kid, it’s got to be tough to see dad in jail,” said Sgt. Jonas Birdsall, one of the jailers. “They say, ‘Daddy, why can’t I hug you?’ Sometimes you ask yourself why do they even bring kids here.”

Some of those in jail don’t want their families to come. At least at first.

“They may go through a stage when first incarcerated that they don’t want people to see them. But that usually changes. They miss their families,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Lane Greenberg.

Inmate Ben Vachtel agreed. Jailed for eight months on drug charges, the 28-year-old West Hollywood construction worker was stunned at first when none of his friends visited him.

“But my family came. My mom, my dad, my sister. They missed me. You think you have friends, but you don’t. You learn you have lived a life of illusions,” said Vachtel.

Inmate Steve Martinez’s 280-day sentence on a probation violation ends March 6. He doesn’t expect to see his wife or four children--who range in age from 1 1/2 to 16--until he’s released. He plans to call home Christmas morning.

“My wife doesn’t drive,” explained Martinez, 36, a Claremont construction worker. “But I wouldn’t want my family to see me here. Once before, when my 12-year-old daughter was 6, I was in jail for driving without a license. She’s always remembered seeing me in jail.”

Martinez said he has kept himself busy during his sentence by earning his high school equivalency certificate and learning a printing trade in jail.

Aside from the toy trucks, cars and helicopters made from wood by male inmates and rag dolls stitched together by female inmates at the Twin Towers Jail in downtown Los Angeles, inmates are eligible to sign up for real vocational and educational classes at the Castaic lockup, officials said.

Gone are the days when prisoners tended to milk cows and hogs and raised crops at the Pitchess center--which opened in 1938 as the Wayside Honor Rancho and initially housed drunks. Jail administrators say the farm was phased out in 1992 when it became too costly to operate and harder-edged prisoners began being sentenced there.

But newly elected Sheriff Lee Baca is considering reintroducing some modern agriculture--namely a grape vineyard and a grass sod farm.

And there is a move afoot to convert some of the now-vacant low-security inmate housing from the honor rancho days into facilities for female prisoners who have given birth while in custody.

But don’t expect one thing to ever change, officials warned.

No Christmas gifts are allowed for prisoners at the Pitchess center.