Containing the violence

In response to fatal brawls in the nation’s largest county jail system, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials will begin moving high-risk male inmates from throughout the system to the newest facility, Twin Towers in downtown. Starting March 25, female inmates there will be transferred to make room. Twin Towers has two-inmate cells, in short supply at Pitchess Detention Center jails in Castaic, where most of the violence has occurred.

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Open design at Pitchess’ North County Correctional Facility

- Typically 62 inmates share a barracks-like day-room area. They sleep on double or triple bunks arranged in rows.

- An open jail design is cheaper. In California, the average construction cost of an adult jail bed was $52,500 in 2001.

Security arrangement

- A sheriff’s deputy monitors four dorms from a central station. Inmates can see the guard through the dorm’s bars.

- There are two of these wings on each floor.

When a fight breaks out

- Deputy monitoring inmates radios the watch commander, who alerts an emergency response team of deputies. The jail’s gang unit deputies may also be summoned.

- The team breaks up the disturbance.

- Suspected instigators are isolated and may be sent to disciplinary areas.

- Built in the late 1980s as a maximum-security complex, it currently houses about 3,800 inmates in five facilities on a 34-acre complex.

Crowding

Extra bunk beds have been added to accommodate more prisoners in open dorms. There are no individual cells in these dorms.

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Smaller dorms with individual cells at Twin Towers jail

- About 32 inmates share a day-room area. They sleep in two-person cells.

- Currently houses almost all county female inmates and most of the county’s mentally ill inmates.

Security arrangement

- A sheriff’s deputy monitors three dormitories from a dark, smoked-glass enclosure into which inmates cannot see.

- Built in the 1990s as a maximum-security prison, the 10-acre complex includes housing for about 4,000 inmates in the two towers.

Two-person cells

Deputies can lock down inmates in their cells to help quell disturbances.

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Chronology

Brawls in at least five jails have left two men dead, more than 25 hospitalized and 125 others injured since Feb. 4. Here’s a look:

Feb. 4: One dead, 50 are injured in riot at North County Correctional Facility (NCCF).

Feb. 5: Ten inmates are hurt as 170 Latinos and 35 blacks fight at the Pitchess Detention Center North, next to NCCF. Sheriff Lee Baca announces segregation of blacks and Latinos there -- allowed in emergencies under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Feb. 7: Baca says some of the more dangerous inmates will move in March to Twin Towers.

Feb. 8: Nineteen inmates at Pitchess and 10 at Men’s Central Jail are injured.

Feb. 9: About 200 inmates fight in two dorms after a clergy and media group visits NCCF.

Feb. 12: An inmate dies in Men’s Central Jail and 90 brawl at the Pitchess North facility.

Feb. 16: Baca says he will initially seek charges against 21 inmates, including seven suspects in the first death. Most of the suspected shot-callers in the fights at Pitchess have been moved out of dorms and into cells.

Feb. 27: Inmates scuffle in processing area at NCCF.

Feb. 28: One inmate hospitalized, 13 others injured as 94 inmates brawl at NCCF.

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Sources: L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, California Board of Corrections, Times reporting. Graphics reporting by Cheryl Brownstein-Santiago