It’s a Privilege for Prisoners to Be in Honor Yard

Locked in the steel grip of a life sentence, David McCoy has seen the worst of prison life.

Incarcerated since 1986, McCoy transferred through three prisons down the length of the state before landing in Lancaster.

Along the way, he witnessed stabbings, shootings, beatings and various other bloody assaults between inmates.

“I’d always worry about watching my back,” he said. “It was stressful. I got my gray hairs from not knowing what each day was going to be like.”

Now, McCoy, 36, believes he has found a haven.

He is one of 576 inmates in the California State Prison at Lancaster’s Honor Yard, a pilot program that separates “good” prisoners from those looking for trouble. Since it began in 2000, violence and drug use have dramatically decreased, officials said.

“It’s for level-headed guys who just want to do our time and hopefully parole,” said McCoy, who is serving a life sentence without parole for murder. “I’d rather fight the courts than fight other prisoners.”

Sprawled across 262 acres in the Mojave Desert, the Lancaster prison is the only state correctional facility in Los Angeles County. It was built in 1993 to house 2,200 prisoners, and now holds 4,200 men.

About 90% of the prisoners in the maximum-security facility are “lifers” -- men living out life sentences for crimes such as rape and murder.

The violence recorded on their rap sheets spills over into the prison’s yards, where inmates cluster in gangs along racial lines. McCoy calls it a “war zone.”

Over the years, the yards’ relentless cycle of escalating tension and violent outbursts leading to lockdowns left some inmates frustrated and terrified.

“It’s basically a bad-boys-turned-good program,” said Lt. Ken Lewis, the prison’s public information officer. “You’ve got guys who’ve got life, who have no place to go, who just want to do their time, communicate with other races. The Honor Yard is tailored for those individuals.”

The Honor Yard is housed separately in A Yard, a five-building facility with its own yard on the west edge of the prison.

Prisoners must apply and promise in writing to avoid violence, drug activity or other misbehavior. They must participate in a work program or take classes, and their progress is regularly reviewed. If they commit a serious infraction, they are booted from the yard.

In return for good behavior, inmates are given an environment in which they can let their guard down.

“Guys can sit around and not be worried, looking over their shoulder,” said Father Tomas White, A Yard’s chaplain. “The tension is gone from the place.”

Lynn Harrison, the prison’s community resources manager, agreed.

“You walk out into the yard and it’s relaxed,” Harrison said. “You’ll even see someone taking a nap out on the lawn. They could never do that before.”

Activities for Honor Yard inmates are more plentiful than at other yards. Many of the programs directly benefit outside communities. The Lions Club donates eyeglasses that the inmates fix and send to Third World countries.

Officials said money for the yard is taken from the prison’s general budget and does not affect or deprive the rest of the population.

Stepping into the 135,000-square-foot dirt- and grass-covered yard, there’s something unexpected: cleanliness. Inmates have planted flowers and are building a brick sign welcoming visitors to their home.

Inmates take equal pride inside, officials said, even polishing the brass railing that circles each floor inside the housing units.

“These are neat kinds of programs, desirable for both inmates and correctional officers,” said Richard Tewksbury, a professor at the University of Louisville in Kentucky who specializes in prison culture.

“It provides a haven within a prison and gives inmates the opportunity to live ... in a safer environment.”

According to prison officials, weapons infractions are down 88%, violence and threatening behavior are down 85%, and drug-related offenses and trafficking are down 43%. The statistics come from a comparison of A Yard before and after it became an Honor Yard.

There have been problems, however. In December, guards uncovered an escape plot and the entire yard was locked down for nearly two weeks.

The Honor Yard is the only program of its kind among California’s maximum-security prisons.

For years, prisons across the country have tried to maintain a balance of punishments and rewards. Many have created “honor blocks” or programs aimed at keeping inmates occupied with productive activities.

“You want to run prisons and kids the same way,” said Kevin Wright, a professor of criminology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, N.Y.

“You want them busy during the day and asleep at night. If we can keep them busy and motivated, then it’s just cheaper to run a facility.”

In overcrowded prisons such as Lancaster, struggling to stay afloat amid deep state budget cuts, having a separate unit of well-behaved prisoners also means less money spent on lockdowns and workers’ compensation for staff injuries.

“This is cheap,” said Mark Fleisher, director of the Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education at Case Western University in Cleveland. “If you self-sort 500, then you only have 3,500 to worry about.”

Other experts said the success of the Honor Yard should be no surprise.

“Unless there’s some kind of random assignment, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it’s doing well,” said Daniel Mears, senior research associate at the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.

“They’re not targeting ... the worst, most serious offenders. They’re targeting inmates who would probably do well anyway.”

The type of prisoners attracted to a program such as the Honor Yard tend to be in their late 30s or 40s. Inmates and prison officials estimate that up to 90% of the men are lifers.

“Lifers are the best inmates in prison; they’re the most peaceful, the best leaders, the most thoughtful,” said L. Paul Sutton, a criminal justice professor at San Diego State.

“He knows if he hiccups wrong, the parole board will give him another five years. Lifers are the easy ones.”

Inmates and officials acknowledge that the Honor Yard has earned myriad names among the prisoners in the other yards -- everything from the Retirement Yard to the PC Yard -- and is not necessarily seen as an incentive to improve their conduct.

“Having 500 men in a separate yard is going to have no effect on the behavior of the other 3,500,” Fleisher said. “It’s middle-class fantasies, like honor classes. It does not work in prisons.”

Calipatria State Prison is implementing a program based on the Lancaster model. But Suzan Hubbard, southern regional administrator for the Department of Corrections, warned that any attempt to start a department-wide Honor Yard while the program is still experimental could be tricky.

“Any attempt at this point in mandating X number of prisons will have honor yards could become problematic if you designate an area [as an honor yard] and can’t come up with the inmates to fill the beds,” Hubbard said. “We never have the luxury of having empty beds.”