OFFICIALS TO RE-INTEGRATION JAIL TROUBLEMAKERS WILL BE SENT ELSEWHERE.

Byline: Patricia Farrell Aidem Staff Writer

CASTAIC - Sheriff's officials have set Thursday as a target date to re-integrate the Pitchess jails in Castaic where three days of racial brawls have left one inmate dead, scores injured and thousands on the periphery living in fear.

``Shot callers'' - the inmates who instigated the fighting that started Saturday and spread between two of the jails - are being identified and they and other troublemakers will be transferred to other facilities, county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and sheriff's Chief Sam L. Jones said in a brief news conference Tuesday afternoon outside the sprawling Pitchess Detention Center complex.

``It's a mess, but it's being slowly brought under control,'' said Yaroslavsky, who visited the center after the jail violence dominated discussion at a morning Board of Supervisors meeting.

Jones said a captain within the jails got word in the days before rioting broke out Saturday that there would be trouble. Eleven additional deputies were assigned to help monitor the jails but had little information about what was coming.

``We had information that something may happen. We didn't know when, where, what time, what facility,'' Jones said.

Once order was restored, the inmates were segregated. Latinos are on the first floor of one facility and blacks and other are on the second floor.

Because Latinos are the majority, the first floor has several empty beds, a problem in an overcrowded system, Yaroslavsky said.

For the most part, inmates themselves want peace, Jones said.

``The majority don't have fight in them,'' he said. ``But if you don't fight, you become a victim. You have inmates who are nervous, scared, concerned for their safety.''

Over the next few days, as troublemakers are moved out and the jails re-integrated, inmates from other county jails will be transferred to Pitchess to help dilute the tension, Jones said.

The 7,500 or so inmates at Pitchess don't live behind bars but in large dormitories designed for human comfort and better surveillance by guards. Up to 96 men live in the 16 open dorms that make up the North Facility, the scene of two battles Monday night.

They sleep and eat there, shower, watch TV and use open restrooms. They can interact or find some personal space. And the sheriff's deputies serving as guards watch from a central, secured desk.

The open space is designed to provide a more humane atmosphere, but when tempers flare, the architecture allows for some large-scale free-for-alls.

``It can be good and bad. Lately, it's been bad,'' said sheriff's Deputy Luis Castro, a department spokesman.

Monday night, after a weekend of deadly violence, two more battles broke out that involved scores of men and left seven inmates injured, Deputy Ban Nguyen said. Like the rioting on Saturday and Sunday that sent 33 inmates to 15 hospitals from Lancaster to Santa Monica, the fighting pitted Latinos against blacks. Six remain hospitalized, officials said.

Sheriff Lee Baca said the reasons behind the violence are twofold - racial tensions on the streets are augmented behind bars and his department hasn't been able to recruit deputies quickly enough to fill a manpower void. The department has some 1,100 openings for deputies.

``We're running really low on deputies,'' Nguyen said.

Six guards watch each dorm - about one per 16 inmates. Though armed with nonlethal weapons to quell violence, the odds are against them when such mass fighting breaks out. And despite a state Corrections Department study in the early 1990s that showed dormitory-style accommodations were a factor in inmate brawls at Pitchess years ago, the county's Twin Towers Jail, which opened in 1997, has the same configuration, Castro said.

``It's an easier setting, more comfortable,'' Castro said. ``You have windows versus bars.''

The county's oldest lockup, Men's Central Jail, has old-style cells that house two to four inmates each. It's a costly system to guard, and tough on inmates, whose actions are extremely limited, Castro said.

``What happens when you lock a pet in the bathroom? That would be the equivalent,'' he said. ``An animal would become restless and look for ways to do something. Human nature is the same way. If you're locked down, you don't have a chance to interact much.

Patricia Farrell Aidem, [phone]

pat.aidem(at)dailynews.com