A glimpse of what life’s like behind bars

I spent a couple of hours locked inside the Orange County Central Jail complex in Santa Ana, even though I didn’t commit a crime.

I was a guest, invited to join some county officials for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Intake/Release Center, as well as the Central Men’s Jail.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to shoot video or take photographs because of security concerns, so I can’t show you what it looked like behind bars, but I can tell you how it felt. In one word: creepy!

Before the tour began, we had to go through an entryway called a “sally port.” It’s basically a secured space protected by a double set of electronically controlled gates to prevent any inmates from escaping. One barred gate slammed shut with a loud bang before the second gate opened, creating a couple of moments when I felt, well, trapped.

We started at the entrance of the Intake/Release Center where a woman in handcuffs was wearing a heavy sweater, long skirt and a pair of lamb’s wool boots, despite the 80-degree day. She was belligerent and started screaming for help when the female deputy tried to pat her down.

“Oh man!” I thought. “Glad I don’t have that job!”

The Central Men’s Jail reminded me of something you’d see in a film like “The Shawshank Redemption.” The 42-year-old facility has the old-style linear cells, stacked on two levels, with two walls of inmates facing each other.

Deputies walk down a glass-enclosed corridor to keep an eye on the men in their cells. The glass has a reflective coating which inmates use to see and communicate with each other on both levels, deputies told me. They also pass notes, called “kites,” through the ventilation system, and use a prison version of sign language.

There was a pretty young woman in our group who attracted a lot of attention from the incarcerated men. I noticed one inmate groping himself while watching the woman and using a lewd hand gesture I can’t describe for you in a family publication.

Deputy M. Stafford told me most of the talk among inmates is about sharing information, such as buying or selling what little dope gets in the jail by inmates using what deputies call, colorfully, a “prison wallet.” For the uninformed, like me, a “prison wallet” holds whatever riches you can stuff up your rear end.

Personally, I thought chow hall duty seemed like the toughest jailhouse job. There are about a half-dozen deputies responsible for controlling a room with more than 200 inmates who may or may not like each other. If something goes wrong, the supervisor locks the deputies inside with the fighting inmates until emergency back-up can arrive. Scary!

I joked with the deputies on duty, asking if they drew the “short sticks” to get the chow hall assignment. One deputy laughed and said, “It’s something like that.” Another deputy added, “And we’re all winners.”

You might be surprised to learn that deputies carry Tasers and pepper spray for protection instead of guns. Any police officer who comes to the Central Men’s Jail with an arrestee has to remove his or her service weapon and place it in a lockbox before entering the secure area.

Deputy A.J. Patella said there’s always an element of risk when dealing with potentially violent inmates.

“We don’t want any firearms in there, because if we have it, they can get it,” he said.

If inmates do get violent or there’s a riot situation, deputies call in the Emergency Response Team, or what’s often called the jailhouse SWAT. The team wears riot helmets, stab-proof vests and gas masks.

They use an arsenal of less-than-lethal weapons such as pepper-ball guns, 40 mm sponge-ball guns and large canisters of pepper spray that look something like a giant fire extinguisher.

Patella said deputies monitor intelligence sources to get a heads-up about racial tensions or gang rivalries that could lead to violence inside the jail. This allows officials to tighten security and put the jailhouse SWAT on stand-by before trouble starts.

Another step deputies take to control inmates is the use of colored wristbands so authorities can tell at a glance who they’re dealing with.

First-timers or those facing misdemeanor charges get a white wristband.

Gang members and repeat offenders wear yellow, while repeat felons wear orange.

Violent inmates get a red wristband and wear leg and waist chains when they’re taken from their cells, always with a two-deputy escort.

Sometimes a sergeant will follow with a video camera to document every step.

There’s one more category of inmates. Those are the guys wearing blue wristbands, who are isolated in protective custody.

They may be child molesters, homosexuals or someone with a threat against his life because he’s willing to testify against other inmates.

Former cops, now on the wrong side of the law, are also “blue-banders” because time behind bars could easily become a death sentence if they were left with other inmates.

At the end of the jail tour, I looked down at my wrist, happy I was wearing a gold watch instead of a colored plastic band.

A couple more clangs of the double-locking barred gates and I got to go home, unlike the guys I was leaving behind.