Classes Free Inmates From a Prison of Anger

James Beard was wiggling his fingers again, a sign he was about to explode.

“Did you hit a woman?” he snapped at a goateed inmate.

“Well?” Beard barked, his lanky 6-foot frame looming over the man recently arrested for attacking his girlfriend. “Did you hit her?”

“Yes, sir,” the man muttered. “But doesn’t every man go DV [domestic violence] some time in his life?”

“No,” Beard replied tartly, “every man doesn’t.” Then Beard went for the teaching moment in his lecture on jealousy and trust.

“We don’t trust women because we don’t listen to them or understand them,” he pressed, turning to the rows of other inmates in jump suits seated on plastic chairs. “Then we wonder why we can’t love them on a deeper level and why we hit them.

“That’s Fred Flintstone stuff!” he yelled.

“Do you feel me?” he bellowed, his arms twitching and fingers wiggling faster. “Do you hear me now?!”

“We feel you, Dr. James!” his audience roared back.

Welcome to Relationships 101, the jail edition.

For more than six years, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has tried to put a dent in its domestic violence caseload by teaching convicted batterers how to control their anger and be better parents and partners. County officials say the six-week Bridges to Recovery program in the Lynwood jail reduces battery rearrests for the men who stick it out.

But the program’s supporters, including some on its small staff, worry that a move planned for March from Lynwood to the more turbulent Twin Towers jail in downtown Los Angeles could disrupt this quiet effort to change lives.

Bridges to Recovery began in June 1999 when Lt. Terence McCarty, who oversees inmate education at the Lynwood jail, realized deputies were reeling in the same batterers again and again.

McCarty enlisted Hacienda La Puente School District officials to develop a curriculum, which is taught largely by Beard and two other instructors.

Deputies at Lynwood’s Century Regional Detention Facility pick inmates who they believe are ready to change.

The 90 or so self-described macho men spend every day for the next six weeks admitting their failures. Those who start fights or refuse to participate are sent back into the jail’s general population.

But if they last, the “DV Dudes,” as they call themselves, receive a certificate, a piece of cake and a better chance of staying out of trouble. To date, 1,700 men have made it to graduation.

McCarty, a 32-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Department, said: “I didn’t embrace this right away.”

After decades arresting and booking criminals, he said, he was skeptical that lectures and group cries could help. But he’s a convert, pumping each inmate’s hand at the graduation ceremony.

McCarty, 55, and Beard said that letters from grateful wives and testimonials from released graduates have told them -- as much as rearrest statistics -- that the program works.

“James changed my life,” said inmate Jimmy Amezola, a 27-year-old helicopter mechanic from Inglewood. The father of two young daughters was arrested for pummeling his estranged wife during an argument. He has since been released.

“James taught me that no one can make me angry except myself,” Amezola said.

The charismatic Beard is a frenetic bundle of contradictions. A dude’s dude, he’s cool and elegant but also a man who laughs at himself. When the 53-year-old instructor skips into the room at 3100 Dorm, his students tuck in their jail blues and sit up straight.

The curriculum is heavy on lessons in self-discovery and self-control, with daily lectures and essay assignments on such topics as handling criticism, “acting like a man” and parenting.

Beard has embroidered that syllabus with his life story -- a childhood of poverty and a series of disastrous relationships -- giving him credibility with his students.

A former drug and alcohol counselor, Beard recognizes his own once-raging boorishness in the men sitting before him.

“I used to get” mad, he growled at one class last year, “when I saw a woman driving an 18-wheeler with cigarettes in her rolled-up sleeves. Who is she, acting like a man?!”

Insights gained from an explosive breakup form the basis for Beard’s lectures and the vignettes he acts out for the students. A big man with a shaved head, he draws raucous laughs by imitating his former girlfriend in falsetto.

Bridges to Recovery works, many inmates said, because the instructors share their personal struggles.

When Johnny Duran, who teaches parenting classes, lectured recently on disciplining children, he recounted the rage he felt when his father’s belt buckle left bloody tracks on his back.

As a rambunctious teenager and the oldest of seven children, Duran didn’t understand why his father was “riding him” all the time.

“Dad was a real macho guy and just didn’t know how to respond to another man in the house,” said the 39-year-old father of two. He urged the men to learn from their parents “so you can do better.”

At a session last year, instructor Elizabeth Curtis sat surrounded by a group of inmates. “I never knew my dad,” she said, an admission that drew nods of sad recognition.

A plastic chair was plastered with name tags representing children of inmates who had gone before. These were children who had been abandoned or belted, who found their fathers high or saw them hit their mothers. The men in the room were there to add their children’s names. But first, Curtis said, “we’re going to talk about your relationship with your father and your kids.”

Most of the inmates stared at the floor. A man with tattooed flames on his forearms gripped a roll of toilet paper.

Where Beard is forceful, Curtis is a soothing shoulder for tough homeboys distraught over a girlfriend lost to meth addiction or a son who has followed his father into violence.

“You guys are your children’s history,” she began quietly. “The easy part is to run away. You know what that’s like, right?

“But it’s not enough to be with our kids,” she continued. “Sometimes we can be there every day and do things we know are hurtful.”

The man holding the toilet paper started to sob.

“Every one of you has the opportunity to break that cycle,” she told them, “so your kids don’t have to sit in a class like this.”

Curtis walked around the circle, passing out colored markers and file labels, one for each child, and called on the inmates to say something about their children.

Joseph Duffey, 22, was working in a warehouse when he was arrested for hitting his pregnant girlfriend.

“She had my little girl since I’ve been in here,” he said softly. “I haven’t seen her yet, so I don’t know what’s special about her.” Shrugging, he pasted his label to the chair.

When it was his turn, the tattooed man with the toilet paper knelt before the chair and was overcome again, unable to speak. He had five labels in his hand.

McCarty and his teachers believe this remorse -- the first step toward recovery -- is possible largely because of the program’s “committed, supportive staff” and the “DV Dudes’ ” isolation from Lynwood’s 200 other inmates.

At Twin Towers, that may be harder to achieve.

Marc Klugman, chief of correctional services for the Sheriff’s Department, concedes that inmates in the program will be “closer geographically than they are now” to the general population. “We still think we can still do the program,” he said, adding that McCarty’s team has “done a good job.”

Beard, Duran and Curtis have said they will stay with the program.

But Bridges to Recovery’s 55th graduation ceremony, on Feb. 28, will be McCarty’s last. The program’s guiding hand decided to retire after the Twin Towers move was announced, saying only that “it’s time to explore some other options in my life.”