I hate signing releases. But in the end I agreed that if I were taken hostage, the County of Los Angeles need not exchange an inmate to save my life.

Walking through the maximum-security jail I stayed close to Deputy Knott.

North County Correctional Facility, called Pitchess Detention Center, houses 3,500 inmates who are either sentenced for misdemeanors, awaiting a bed at state prison following a felony conviction, or remanded and awaiting trial. Some have been incarcerated three years, waiting for their case to be decided. Others keep coming back.

“There are a lot of repeat offenders,” Deputy Knott said. “I can’t tell you how many guys I’ve seen come and go, and they’re like, ‘Deputy Knott, you’re still here?’ ”

The inmates are grouped according to their race or security level. Segregating inmates is illegal except in emergencies. For the past year—ever since last February’s race riot at the prison—the Mexican Americans (or “South Siders”) have been housed together in one section and the blacks, whites (”woods”) and Latin Americans (”paisas”) housed together in another.

Deputy Knott took me to see the blacks, whites and Latin Americans. There were four or five dorms making a semi-circle around a central command station, where a deputy sat on watch. Each dorm holds 69 inmates, who eat, watch TV and sleep in bunk beds there. Everyone wants a bottom bunk, Knott said.

If a fight breaks out, the guard in the command station calls in a request for the emergency response team. If it’s serious, the lieutenant will authorize the use of special weapons, and the deputies will fire pepper balls, rubber bullets, sting grenades and gas.

“The door comes down,” said Knott, pointing to the outside of each dorm. A cage-like barrier separated the inmates from us. “And they’re baking in all that gas.”

He later showed me the room where they store the riot gear and special weapons, which are not meant to be lethal, he said, but could definitely kill an inmate.

We went to Level 10 security, where they house the so-called keep-aways. The keep-aways are inmates who have either failed to follow the rules— “misbehaved” in the vocabulary of the guards—or inmates who need extra protection. If a gang member does something to piss off his gang, another deputy explained, the gang puts a “green light” on him, signaling members to hurt or kill him. Level 10 security prisoners live in two-person cells. They can’t watch TV, use the phone or socialize.

The lights were out when we arrived. “They sleep their time away,” Knott said. No need for lights. The inmates who misbehaved wait there until they can explain their case to the sergeant, who will probably send them to solitary confinement.

We went through security doors into a narrow hallway to see the solitary confinement quarters. Each cell—called a “hole,” just like in the movies—measures about 5 feet by 10 feet. There’s a bunk attached to a wall and there’s a toilet. When the rooms fill up, they put two inmates in one cell. There are no windows or bars, only a tiny opening in the door. One of the guys there kept misbehaving, according to his record, which was attached to the door. He had been hit with three back-to-back terms in solitary. He entered the hole in January and is scheduled to get out in April.

He stood at the door, looking at us. “What do you do all day,” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “There’s nothing to do.”

We walked up to another cell. A man came to the door. “Why are you here?” I asked. He said he had a broken hip. He’s 51 but looked and sounded like an old man. He tried to get a bottom bunk, he said, but the deputies wouldn’t let him. They told him he needed a note from the doctor.

“Did you go to the doctor?” I asked.

“It took too long,” he said.

I wished him luck, and we said goodbye.

After the tour, I collected my belongings and went to the visitors’ room. Again, just like in the movies, there were two long rows of cubicles separated by glass, each one outfitted with a phone. I was there to meet with Chris Nathis, who was waiting to go on trial for murder. He’s 29 and faces 75 years-to-life in prison.

Chris came out, and I told him I was there to learn more about his old friend, Ricco Daughtrey, a former gang member about whom I was writing a profile. I mentioned the name of the detective on the case, the one who told me about Chris, and quickly realized I had made a mistake.

“Why would he send you here? He don’t like me,” Chris said over and over. His questions implied that he thought the detective had sent me to find out information about him or Ricco.

He stared at me, like I was there to make his life harder. Or maybe he was memorizing my face in case I pissed him off. He wouldn’t laugh at my jokes and didn’t want to share information about Ricco. I learned the rules of snitching.

“I’m not looking to get Ricco into trouble,” I said. “You can tell me good things. What was he like as a friend? Why did you hang out with him?”

“I can’t talk to you about him,” he said. “To me, it’s against the law. If I tell you something about Ricco, it’s going to look bad at me.”

His English was so bad, it was hard for me to understand him.

Chris and Ricco were friends from South Central. Ricco had told me he used to belong to the 76th Street East Coast Crips. Chris said nether of them were ever gang members.

I asked Chris about his neighborhood. It’s still bad, he said. “I got five friends going on trial right now for murder. All from that area.”

A lot of his friends are already in prison, he said.

When I asked how many of his friends have been killed, he practically laughed at the suggestion that he could keep track. More than 10, he said. The youngest killed was 14 years old.

I don’t know if Chris is guilty of murder or not. Either way, it is disturbing to think that this young guy might spend the rest of his life behind bars, always a misbehavior away from a stretch in the hole.

——
Hanna Ingber Win is a staff writer and editor at Pop and Politics. Pushing Off is a column of her dispatches from twentysomething land. Pictured: Not Deputy Knott.