Staffers' kids get close look at parents' state prison jobs

For some, the program counters a negative image of prison employees.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
LANCASTER, Calif. -- While kids around the United States spent take-your-child-to-work day touring law firms and sales offices, 13-year-old Branden Brittain joined his dad at Lancaster State Prison and learned how to make a crude knife using only a cigarette lighter and a Styrofoam cup.
Branden was among 20 or so children of prison personnel who spent a few hours this week learning about the challenges and dangers their parents face every day at work at the facility north of Los Angeles.
They also learned about the homemade prison wine called "pruno," and sampled an actual prison-made lunch. They also were asked to sign a form explaining that they shouldn't expect negotiations if they were taken hostage.
The children, who ranged from 12 to mid-teens, laughed uneasily about the form and at first seemed a little overwhelmed by the desert prison. But by day's end they had ask a series of questions worthy of a state Senate hearing:
How are inmates punished if they attack someone? Where do they get all that contraband? And what's your annual budget?
Kept away from inmates
The children never got near the cells and spent time either in the administration building, a classroom or on a bus touring the prison well outside its lethal electric fence. From that safe vantage, tour guides showed the kids the place where the guards check out their rifles, the place where the inmates hone their bricklaying skills, and the place where a staff member was viciously assaulted this month.
"Prisons are kind of a secret thing," said Branden's father, guard David Brittain, as the kids piled off the bus. "[But] it's important for kids to come in and see what their parents do. We protect society."
Despite its no-nonsense primer on the violent realities of prison, the kids-to-work program has been a hit at Lancaster and some other prisons around the state for years, demonstrating how deeply the corrections system has worked itself into the fabric of Californians' everyday lives.
Countering negative image
At a time when California's prison system is barraged by criticism -- that it can't manage its money, that it's a "revolving door" for criminals, that the guards union wields too much power -- Thursday was a chance for Brittain and other personnel to show their kids that they're on the side of the good guys.
Lt. Charles Hughes, a guard and president of the local chapter of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, said he fears that recent criticism of the prison system and his union leaves an impression that guards are "just idiots, and we're just walking around dumb."
California operates the largest state prison system in the United States, incarcerating 162,000 inmates and employing nearly 50,000 people. Lancaster's prison alone provides north Los Angeles County with 1,200 good-paying jobs -- a fact that has tempered safety concerns that have lingered among local residents since the prison opened in 1993.
Lynn Harrison, a physical plant supervisor and former Lancaster mayor, has been running the prison's kids-to-work program for the last five years or so. The effort, she said, was part of the prison system's bid to go "mainstream."
"Why should we separate ourselves from the mainstream culture?" she said. "Other parents take their kids to work. These children understand that their parents work in a prison. It's not like Disneyland ... but it's a positive impact for the community."
On the other hand, there were prison personnel such as Hughes, who said he liked the idea of the kids-to-work program but declined to send his own kids.
"I do a very dirty, tough job," Hughes said. "I work with some of the worst [inmates] in the world. Do I really want to expose my family to that environment?"
Deterrent for kids
Others are drawn to the program because it both demystifies prison and promises sobering interviews with convicts -- a "scared straight" approach that appealed to the mother of Javon Smith, 12.
The mother, who didn't want her name used, works in the hiring department at Lancaster; her husband is a guard there. But she said Javon's biological father is serving a 25-to-life murder sentence at Centinela State Prison.
"This is to let him see both sides of it," she said. "The employee side and the inmate side. And to make sure he stays on the right side."
Indeed, Javon followed the three-hour program Thursday with eyes that never seemed to blink.