INMATES STILL SEGREGATED AT PITCHESS PRISONERS HOUSED BY RACE AFTER RIOTS.

Byline: ALEX DOBUZINSKIS Staff Writer

CASTAIC -- More than three months after the latest major disturbance at the Pitchess Detention Center, some inmates at the jail complex remain segregated based on race.

Authorities plan to fully reintegrate the facility within months.

``We'll take it step by step,'' sheriff's Cmdr. Don Rodriguez said. ``We'll pick a date and as inmates come in we'll put them in integrated housing and we'll go back to normal.''

When that date will come is still up in the air.

Race-related street violence can inflame tensions in the jails, and authorities take that into consideration in deciding how and when to reintegrate inmates at the Castaic facility, Rodriguez said.

The Sept. 24 killing in Los Angeles of a 3-year-old Latino girl, reportedly by an African-American gang member, is one incident jail officials have considered in their plan to reintegrate Pitchess.

Another factor has been the termination of a contract with the state Department of Corrections that reserved 1,200 beds at the county jail complex for state prison inmates.

That arrangement ends within months, and that will free space and help county officials reintegrate the jail. The populations should be mixed by the beginning of next year, Rodriguez said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has played a watchdog role for years at Pitchess, is involved in efforts to reintegrate the jails.

``It's not an adversarial relationship,'' Rodriguez said. ``We don't always agree, but we do have a very professional, very good working relationship.''

In July, a disturbance at the North and East facilities at Pitchess left dozens of inmates injured after inmates divided along racial lines and fought.

That followed a riot in February involving 2,000 inmates at the North County Correctional Facility, also at Pitchess. Fighting lasted for weeks at the jail, pitting Latinos against African-Americans, and resulting in the death of one inmate.

About half the 7,600 inmates at Pitchess remain segregated, either along racial lines or if they belong to a group called the ``Southsiders,'' primarily made up of Latino inmates.

Older inmates in a facility nicknamed the ``Old Man's Dorm'' remained integrated. So are inmates in a school program, and in a facility for those accused of sex crimes against children.

Inmates in other parts of the jail are also integrated.

At the maximum-security North County Correctional Facility, the largest part of the Pitchess complex with 3,600 inmates, authorities separated ``Southsiders'' from the general population months ago. As a result, that facility didn't have the disturbances that hit the North and East facilities in July.

William ``Blinky'' Rodriguez, executive director of Communities in School and a gang intervention expert, said the name ``Southsiders'' means the jail inmates come from Southern California.

``You have a lot of subgroups in (jail),'' he said.

Rodriguez, the commander in charge of the jail, said the conflicts behind bars are related to demographics.

``As the county population goes, so goes the county jail,'' he said. ``So now the Hispanic population is increasing in our jail system and they are now the dominant population as far as numbers.''