The Science of Getting Inmates From Jail to Court

The morning begins at 4 a.m. with the clanging of iron doors.

The county jail inmates shuffle out of their cells, walk through a tunnel and enter a mind-numbing maze of lines, holding areas and stale, rank air. Here they wait. And wait. And when they finally walk outside to a morning glorious with the orange-pink of a Los Angeles sunrise, almost all keep their heads down.

They don’t appear to be thinking about this brief moment of fresh air but about whatever court appearance is about to come--be it a simple motion to postpone a robbery hearing or a sentencing for murder.

The bizarre daily scene is referred to by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as “the court line,” the process of moving more than 1,000 inmates a day from their cells to various courthouses.

It’s the largest transportation program of its kind in the country: 40 black-and-white buses hauling inmates between the Los Angeles County Jail and 40 county courthouses, from the Criminal Courts Building a few blocks away to the far reaches of Pomona, Malibu, Lancaster and San Pedro, to name a few.

Some inmates housed in jails in the northern part of the county spend even more hours traveling--being bused downtown the previous evening in order to catch an early morning bus to a distant courthouse.

“We’ve worked this down to a fine science,” says Sheriff’s Lt. Jenny Bethune, wearing her department-issued olive green parka as she oversees the busloads of inmates on this crisp Friday morning.

The brief field trip out of cramped cells would seem to be a welcome respite from the tedium of county jail. It’s not. The dreary routine is just more of the same for inmates, who are usually referred to by deputies simply as “bodies.”

It’s no wonder, then, that probably more than a few are wondering what would happen if the door was left open, the handcuffs left just a little too loose, the deputy looked the other way . . .

While sheriff’s officials say they’ve had only two escapes from the court line in the last five years, the most recent escapee, Kevin Jerome Pullum, just walked out the door. (The other escape involved a convicted robber last year who switched identification wristbands with another inmate but was quickly recaptured.)

Pullum strolled out of Twin Towers jail on July 6 and spent 16 days on the lam--including a weekend with his girlfriend--shopping, drinking and living on the streets until he was arrested by Los Angeles police officers who spotted him near skid row.

Pullum, a third-striker, had been returning from court, where he had been convicted of attempted murder. He had apparently worn street clothes under his jail uniform. He dumped the uniform in the tunnel linking the county jail’s Inmate Reception Center to Twin Towers jail. He then walked out of the jail amid a stream of civilian workers, apparently wearing a fake employee badge carrying a photo of actor Eddie Murphy from “Dr. Dolittle 2.”

Since Pullum’s brazen escape, an embarrassed Sheriff’s Department has moved to increase jailhouse security. A new badge system is in place at Twin Towers and guards are posted to watch the tunnels.

Whether any of the men in the court line on this Friday morning are planning a Pullum is anyone’s guess, but the deputies and civilian workers don’t appear to be taking any chances.

Each weekday morning, handcuffed inmates begin streaming into the old Inmate Reception Center before dawn, entering through a metal detector that keeps jangling because of the metal on their arms. They have been searched minutes before--a new policy developed after an inmate stabbed a deputy and a custody assistant.

Their court passes in hand, they walk to numbered holding cells; each represents a courthouse. Inmates in Cells 1 and 2 go to Compton, Cell 3 to Lynwood, 5 to the L.A. Airport Courthouse, and so on.

This day is referred to as “Friday Lite”; just 778 inmates from Men’s Central Jail have court dates, along with 300 from Twin Towers. Typically, 1,200 to 1,300 inmates pass through these corridors daily.

They wait in the holding cells. Some stretch out, sleeping on the concrete floors. Others curl up in the fetal position using rolls of toilet paper as pillows. Some flip through court papers. Others stare straight ahead. Some are talkative--one joshes with a deputy: “Why don’t you guys get a real job?” The good-natured deputy, who works from 10:30 p.m. until 6:30 a.m., replies, “I resemble that remark,” and chuckles.

Mostly though, inmates wait silently for the deputies to open the cells and begin “chaining up,” an exercise in which the prisoners are chained together at the waist. It is more clanging and banging as the deputies wheel the chains and handcuffs into the cells.

The inmates then move in a line toward the door to the bus yard. Their identification wristbands are scanned. Some carry see-through plastic bags with books, file folders, small packages of Ritz crackers.

They walk, two by two, through the iron doors to the outside. A breeze is blowing as the sun rises, but the inmates barely seem to notice. A deputy shouts the number of inmates in the line--15--and they are counted again as they approach their bus.

Inside the bus, four cages enable the driver to segregate the inmates. Many already have been separated if they are rival gang members, or are self-identified as gay or high security risks. In those cases, a deputy escorts the inmates to the buses.

They also are wearing different-colored uniforms so deputies can more quickly and easily identify them. All brown uniforms, for example, represent medical patients. Those in a yellow top and brown pants are mentally ill and typically taking psychotropic medications. Orange means “keep-aways”--high security risks.

“Sometimes,” said Senior Deputy Ray Coopwood, “it’s total chaos here, but it all gets done.”

Many are amazed that inmates arrive at the right courthouse at the right time.

“I’m always surprised that the Sheriff’s Department does as good a job as it does,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jane Winston.

Then there are the inmates who will do whatever it takes to avoid going to court. When inmates fail to show in the court line because they are hiding in their cells or because of internal snafus--and it happens daily--they are referred to as “miss-outs.”

By 8:30 this day, when the last bus has pulled out of the yard, 59 inmates are missing. By 10:30, 20 are still missing. By 12:30, eight are still missing from their cells. Later, five are determined to be at the medical clinic at the reception center, and three are not located that afternoon.

“Either they went somewhere to hide or they’re working in the jail and they don’t want to go,” says Capt. Richard Barrantes, who oversees the reception center and the court line. “We usually find them.”

The three missing inmates are finally located. Their court dates are rescheduled. They face the court line one more time, one more day.