Women’s Work

With little to do during the day besides watch TV soap operas and episodes of “The Jerry Springer Show,” female inmates at the Ojai Honor Farm spent their time gossiping, bickering and sometimes brawling long after lights went out.

These days, they are too tuckered out for all that.

“Now they just sleep,” said Capt. Joe Funchess. “Just like the men used to do.”

Since the male inmates left the Ojai Honor Farm in August--transferred to the Todd Road Jail to create more room for female housing--the women have taken on the jobs of their male counterparts.

Mow the lawn? Unload delivery trucks? Buff the floor? The women do it all.

It’s just one of many changes for the 180 women housed at the jail since the men left.

“Overall it’s been a good transition,” Funchess said. “We’ve had a few bumps in the road. Things were a little crazy at first. But it’s all smoothed over now.”

A burgeoning female inmate population, which more than doubled in the last decade, forced authorities to move the men out. The farm is the only jail for female inmates in the county.

One of two buildings at the site held all women offenders. To accommodate the overflow, authorities were forced to triple up bunk beds, housing as many as 50 inmates in a unit designed to hold about 24.

And with the men doing most of the work on site, the women sat crowded together for hours. Fights were inevitable.

“You put that many personalities together,” said Kelly Ryan, a service technician for the jail, “and they’re not going to get along. Soon someone’s yelling, then someone else is turning up the TV to hear, so they start yelling louder. The other one turns up the TV again; then they’re arguing.”

Today triple bunks have been reduced to doubles. Fewer than 24 women are usually assigned to one of eight holding rooms. Using the shower, the phone, the bathroom has all become easier.

Tension is down. And the inmates feel it.

“There’s so much more space,” said Janna Trone, 23. “I mean, there’s still drama. Whenever you have 20 or 30 women together, there will be drama. But there’s a lot less of it now.”

But the biggest change isn’t the increased space. It’s the increased workload.

GED and drug rehabilitation classes were offered to female inmates, and some jobs, mainly janitorial and kitchen duties, were available--but not enough to keep more than a fraction of them busy. Mostly, time out of class meant time in front of the TV.

“Even if they wanted to work, we had no place to put them,” Ryan said.

Not anymore.

Inmate Mary Trevino, a support belt strapped around her back, recently stood in back of a truck tossing food deliveries to inmate Luana Ellison. They work in the cook storage area, five hours a day, stocking shelves and freezers. It’s hard manual labor. By the time the truck is unloaded, both are clearly breathing heavily. Do they hate it?

“It’s great,” Trevino said. “This makes my time go by faster. Being cooped up in those dorms, that’s what’s really stressful.”

And with shifts that begin at 6:30 a.m. and end at noon, followed by rehabilitation classes, Ellison said it’s all she can do to stay awake come nightfall.

“By 10 p.m., I’m asleep,” she said. “I’m tired, and I know I have to get up again and work.”

Even the jail staff is impressed by the hard work the women put in. They perform nearly all the same manual, sometimes backbreaking, duties the men did.

“Yeah, but we do it like girls,” said one female inmate, laughing.

In fact, some adjustments had to be made so the women could handle the workload, authorities said.

Two female inmates, instead of one male inmate, must now push the heavy metal food carts between the jail housing units--separated by a fairly steep hill. New trash cans also had to be ordered. Thirty-gallon dumpsters replaced the 55-gallon monsters even the strongest female inmate couldn’t budge.

“There are all kinds of things like that that you just don’t think about,” said Senior Deputy James Fryhoff.

Once a week, a group of male workers is still bused onto the farm to do some of the bigger jobs, most of it heavy landscaping work. The women do the rest. For some, it’s become a matter of pride.

“They get pretty offended if I try to give the job to the men workers,” said Charles Gray, a service technician who runs the jail’s popular horticulture program. “They say, ‘Why, are you saying I can’t do it? I don’t need to rely on a man to do my work.’ ”

Under the newly expanded program, the women are taught to care for the farm’s extensive flower garden, trees, bushes and expansive lawns.

The horticulture program gives Jamie Draper, 19, something to look forward to.

“I’m never going to be a farmer,” Draper said, “but if I go home and have a white picket fence-- which I know I’ll have one day--then I’ll know how to plant my own garden.”

Indeed, for some, the work can be its own reward.

“Working makes me feel like I’m worth something,” said Laurey Ackerman, 33, sitting in front of a cabinet she was covering with a fresh coat of sky blue paint. “I’m in jail, but I’m doing something worthwhile. It makes you feel like a human being.”