The art room allows an outlet for creative inmates. But much more of the prisoners' time is spent in the prison yard, where a large, paved track surrounds several sports fields soccer, basketball, handball. Members of prison gangs hunch over picnic tables. Others stand aside, smoking cigarettes and talking in hushed tones. Guards do random pat-down checks and keep an armed watch from a tower overlooking the yard.
Prisoners speak relatively openly of drugs being smuggled in and sold on the yard.
The yard allows inmates some privacy away from prison personnel to discuss their plans, criminal or otherwise. A few years ago, Gonzalez says, the state ordered all weight-lifting equipment, except exercise bars, banned from prison yards. In the cell blocks, just as in the yard, prisoners congregate largely by race. Whites use one shower, blacks another, Latinos a third. Eight prisoners do duty as barbers, says Correctional Officer Duane Bennett, and it's rare to see a barber cut the hair of a man of a different race.