Cell Count

Census day arrived at Facility C, Building 4 on Wednesday, but residents didn’t get their forms in the mail. Instead, the documents were slipped through narrow side slots in heavy, blue steel doors by correctional officers.

Like residents on the outside of this razor-wired complex, inmates at the state prison had many reasons why they would--or wouldn’t--fill out the forms. Many were clearly eager to be a part of the national head count, while others literally turned their backs on officers who went cell by cell, building by building, distributing forms and envelopes for confidentiality.

“I’m doing life in here,” shouted one bare-chested inmate after officers stopped by his cell. “I don’t give a . . . about the government!”

For some, like Kevin Winn, 34, the census was more about individuals getting a chance to be heard--even if it was a short form with just a handful of basic questions.

“We have a conscience and concerns that need to be heard in the free world,” said Winn, who has served two years of a 15-year sentence for attempted manslaughter. “There are a lot of positive voices inside the prison walls that need to be heard.”

Eddie Walker, 29, politely declined to take part because, he said, “a lot of the information on the forms is available and can be collected from our files.”

As with many inmates, Walker was leery of helping a government agency, even if it is a separate entity from the one he said had dealt him a bad deal. Ten years into his double life sentence for attempted murder, he said his 1990 criminal case was framed by police and his files had been lost by the Los Angeles Police Department.

“It’s hard to want to help when they’re not helping me,” he said calmly, a picture of his wife and photos of Mecca taped to his cell walls.

The Lancaster prison--the only state prison in Los Angeles County--opened in 1993, making this year’s census its first. The 262-acre facility is a complex of sand-colored, two-story buildings amid a windy, scrub-covered landscape. The horizon stretches far into the desert, the sky an expansive blue occasionally traced by jet contrails.

The prison, which housed 4,188 inmates Wednesday, decided to conduct the census with the traditional procedure: passing out short forms, with long forms given to every sixth prisoner. The Census Bureau categorizes prisons and jails as “special places,” so protocol can vary from procedures for typical respondents who live in houses and apartments.

The county’s prisoner and inmate population housed at federal, state and county facilities is about 25,000, the size of a small city such as Cudahy.

All of the County Jail sites operated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department gave census officials their head count data, rather than handing out individual forms. Those jails house about 19,300 inmates, including the 7,258-inmate Pitchess Detention Center near Castaic and the Twin Towers in downtown Los Angeles.

About 2,000 prisoners are incarcerated at two federal facilities in Los Angeles County--the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island and the downtown Metropolitan Detention Center.

The Terminal Island site distributed individual short and long census forms to its 988 inmates April 3, spokeswoman Jacqueline Nichols said. No details were available about the detention center.

At Lancaster State Prison, the process was smooth and took about three hours Wednesday morning. Often, the decision to take a form was based on the actions of cellmates, officers noted.

“They side with their cellies,” Correctional Officer John Sebok said. “They don’t want to look different.”

In some cases, a decision not to fill out a form reflected an inmate’s careful evaluation of how the information might be used.

Serving a 10-year sentence for murder, Dameon Edwards, 31, said he didn’t want prisoner population data to get into the hands of corrections officials, who could use the numbers to bolster plans for more prisons.

Edwards’ family in Tennessee will most likely take part in the census, and the data would help decide funding for residents there, he said. But here on the “inside,” he felt differently.

“It should go to families and children. Not building new prisons,” he said from his cell, which is decorated with a cross, a copy of a prayer he recites daily, and pastoral pictures of the Carolinas and Tennessee.

Many prisoners also thought the census was mandatory and that failure to fill one out would result in a disciplinary write-up, but officers debunked as many of those rumors as possible.

Of the 195 inmates in Building C-4, 91 refused to take part.

But many were happy to cooperate, even if they didn’t have all the answers.

Louis Tejeda, 33, said he received a long form, and that some of the questions seemed out of place, given his circumstances. One asked about his work and income.

Tejeda, a “three-striker” serving 25 years to life, held up his most recent handiwork: delicate picture frames and jewelry boxes crafted from tiny strips of folded, colored paper.

“This is my hobby,” he said.