At Prison, Census Reactions of All Stripes

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 California State Prison in Lancaster 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.

“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 “a lot of the information on the forms is available and can be collected from our files.”

Like many inmates, Walker was leery of helping a government agency. He said that police framed him in his 1990 criminal case and that the Los Angeles Police Department had lost his files.

“It’s hard to want to help when they’re not helping me,” he said calmly in his cell, with pictures of his wife and holy sites of Mecca taped to the walls.

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

The prison, which housed 4,188 inmates as of Wednesday, decided to perform the census with the traditional procedure: passing out short forms to most, with long forms given to every sixth prisoner. The Census Bureau categorizes prisons and jails as “special places,” so protocol can vary from that for the typical civilian respondent.

The number of people incarcerated at federal, state and county facilities in the county is about 25,000, the size of a small city.

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

About 2,000 prisoners are held at two federal facilities in Los Angeles County--the Federal Correctional Institution on 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, said spokeswoman Jacqueline Nichols. No details were available about the downtown center.

At the Lancaster prison, the process was a smooth one 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,” said correctional officer John Sebok. “They don’t want to look different.”

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.

Louis Tejeda, 33, remembered filling out a form in the 1990 census, but this time he said that he got a long form and that some of the questions seemed out of place, given his circumstances. One asked about his work and income.

A “three-striker” serving 25 years to life, he 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.