Roleplaying a Stay in County Jail

[Large Hazard]

This a copy of a guide I posted on the LSSD forums.

 

Everyone has their own opinion about the fact that we’re roleplaying in a county jail rather than a prison. Sure, prison is a “harder” environment and roleplaying some things in jail can be awkward but county has its pros too. When some of the issues are ironed out, the fact that we’re “stuck with” a jail won’t be much of a problem anymore. The point of this thread is to address one such issue I’ve noticed, which is that people either don’t fully understand the difference between county and prison or they just don’t think about it. As a result, their roleplay is off the mark. This guide will hopefully give you the information you need to ensure you’re roleplaying a stay in county realistically.

Levels of custody
The different levels of custody in the United States are something you should be aware of as an inmate roleplayer, and it’ll help with your roleplay. I need to go through this in order to fully explain how to roleplay a stay in county.

• Juvenile Custody - self-explanatory. This is where you end up as a youth offender. This includes juvenile halls and, for more serious offenders, what used to be known as the California Youth Authority (or San Andreas Youth Authority for us). Youth Authority is an outdated term, it’s now known as the California (or San Andreas) Division of Juvenile Justice. It’s a branch of the Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation.
• County Jail - remand detention in the custody of a county. Twin Towers Correctional Facility is a county facility. County jails house people sentenced to very minor custodial terms (such as 30 days or less) or people not yet convicted of more serious state charges. For example, if you’ve been charged with murder you’re still going to be housed in county jail with everybody else while you go through your trial. This is the focus of this thread.
• State Prison - mostly self-explanatory. This is prison. You’re only here if you’ve been convicted of a state offence and sentenced to prison time. State offences are anything that is a violation of state law. Most crimes are violations of state law, including petty crimes, robberies, assaults, homicides and sex offences. This is where most of our characters are headed.
• Federal Prison - prison, but for violations of federal law. Federal crimes are more complicated. They include things like international or interstate drug trafficking or smuggling, bank robberies and a lot of other ‘money crimes’, wire fraud, interstate transportation of stolen property and racketeering violations. A lot of gang members, especially prison gang members and Hispanic gang members, end up ‘graduating’ from state prison to federal prison because of federal racketeering indictments. Your character is not, I repeat not headed to federal prison or facing federal prison time if he’s in TTCF so don’t roleplay it. The federal prison system has their own detention centers which are like county jails for if you’re fighting federal charges, and they’d be housed there instead.

Roleplaying a stay in county
On to the meat of this thread. Being in county is very different to being in prison. I know that there’s no difference on GTA:W because you end up in TTCF whether you’ve been convicted or not and it essentially serves as the server’s prison, but if you’re an inmate roleplayer looking to be as accurate as possible this is not how you should be roleplaying county. County is mostly filled with people who are either serving time on very minor crimes (and I mean very minor, like having too many parking tickets) - which does not apply to most of our characters, who are gang members - and people who are fighting charges and have not yet been convicted. That second category is where you should be focusing your backstory. This function of county jails is, in theory, only supposed to hold people who have been refused bail because they’re a danger to society or a flight risk. However, because of a combination of reasons (the bail system being so fucked up, and Los Angeles county being filled with Hispanic gang members who are either considered dangerous or likely to flee to Mexico), in actuality the county system is packed full of gang members at any one time. So what does all this mean for you? In short, don’t roleplay that your character is “serving time” if he’s in county. Even if you have actually been convicted according to the script, don’t roleplay it. It doesn’t make sense and it makes the county environment weird for everybody. The safest option is to roleplay that he is instead fighting his charges. It can take an extremely long time (multiple years in some cases) for a case to go through the courts system in LA, so this gives you a long time to work with.

 

By the way, parole violations send you straight back to prison - not to county - so don’t roleplay that either. If you’re trying to roleplay an experienced inmate rather than a fresh youngster, there are other options. See below.

 

There are exceptions. Other reasons for your character to be in county. These, however, are what I would call ‘advanced’ options that I would not recommend you roleplay unless you know what you’re doing. First: your character is a seasoned inmate who’s serving state time already but has been sent back to Los Santos county to fight new charges. When you’re on trial for charges, you’re tried and held in whichever county the alleged crime occurred in. For this option, you would have to roleplay that either your character is facing some type of long-distance indictment charges related to his gang activities (like being accused of orchestrating gang activities in Los Santos from his prison cell), or that he’s being charged with a stabbing or murder that he perpetrated during his last stay in a Los Santos county jail. Don’t roleplay that he’s facing charges for a stabbing he did in prison, because he would be tried in whatever county that prison is in, not in Los Santos.

 

Second: your character is “out to court” (OTC) in LS county on subpoena. This is a system that’s frequently abused by security threat groups to conduct business and give each other what essentially amounts to holidays. A member or associate who is on trial in Los Santos can have other inmates subpoenaed to testify as character witnesses on their behalf, for which they must be transported to Los Santos County. Such members and associates thus write up a whole list of friends and associates, giving them either a break from the monotony of their upstate cell or a chance to conduct business, organize some kind of high-level murder or just to see their family. The STGs even interact between races on this - a Mexican Mafia member will draw up a list of other carnales to have subpoenaed but he’ll also include some AB members and maybe a couple of black inmates too, and vice versa. It’s considered common courtesy to extend this opportunity to the other races whenever possible. The Mexican Mafia are probably the most prolific abusers of this system, because so many of their criminal enterprises are based in and around Los Angeles and being housed in county rather than upstate makes conducting that business much easier. This is the main reason Men’s Central Jail and the real life Twin Towers are considered Eme strongholds - there’s always a few members present, and an extremely organized hierarchy. This option for roleplaying a stay in county is probably the most advanced and most exclusive. Your character is unlikely to have access to such an opportunity unless he’s a member of a security threat group or, in some cases, an associate of one.

 

Third: state prison overcrowding. My information on how accurate this is for real life is limited, but the LSSD does roleplay it. The idea here is that the LS county system has taken some overflow from the SADCR. Considering how massive a problem overcrowding is in California, I believe this should be considered a valid option for roleplay because it’s not particularly hard to believe. However, there are some caveats. Your character is unlikely to be transferred from a state prison to a county jail simply for the purpose of overcrowding unless he is a relatively low level inmate. The lowest level threats would be transferred first, leaving state prison bunks vacant for higher level and more dangerous inmates. Consider this if you’re going to roleplay it. Somebody who’s doing time for murder (or probably anything violent at all) or is known to have serious gang connections would not be transferred on the basis of overcrowding.

Edited May 5, 2021 by Large Hazard

[Ted]

IMPORTANT INFO TO ALL THOSE THAT WANT TO RP IN TTCF! MANDATORY READING! 

[Yoak]

Had a quick read over this. Very informative guide and everyone with intention of rping in the jail should read this.

[David Mizrahi]

Nice one, Liam.

[i dont wanna od in LA]

9 minutes ago, Ted said:

IMPORTANT INFO TO ALL THOSE THAT WANT TO RP IN TTCF! MANDATORY READING! 

 

[Austin Gallegos]

This should be mandatory for anyone roleplaying/planning to roleplay a gang banger.

[TyJ]

MUST READ.

[Tarantino]

Good guide, this is a MUST if you're planning to RP in TTCF.

[Gecko]

Here's some miscellaneous info that is off-topic but can be helpful to those used to playing in a prison (versus jail):

 

1. Jails are more chaotic and less organized than state prisons. That's because you'll have a lot of people for various small-time offenses there, people who don't know the politics, junkies experiencing withdrawals, crazy people, people that haven't been vetted yet. You shouldn't expect a militant strict program like on a level 4 prison yard.

 

2. Deputies aren't COs. Even slang-wise they aren't. COs work for the Department of Corrections. Calling the deputies in-game COs doesn't make sense. They're pigs, but not COs. On another note, it's also worth acknowledging the history of exactly how corrupt and brutal deputies in those jails were in the 80s and 90s (under Lee Baca as well). There's a lot of horror stories out there of them pretty much committing crimes or messing with the inmates for no reason. It's gotten better now that they have cameras in each building.

 

3. This isn't fully role-play-able, but the major thing in county jail is uniform colors and wristbands. For clothing, blue and blue is general population, yellow and blue is psych meds, mental issues, etc (sometimes people lie they're 5150 so they do their time here instead of the mainline), brown is medical/injuries, sky blue is homosexuals, orange can be high power, and so on, and so on. It varies from jail to jail. It's supposed to be part of the gangster culture and common knowledge. I remember reading an AB member bragging about being a K10 H red wristband for choking a deputy out and ever since not being allowed to move anywhere without two deputies escorting him handcuffed.

 

4. Outdoor recreation is often called "roof time" instead of "yard time", because those yards are on the roof portions of the buildings.

 

5. There's no Security Housing Unit (SHU) in LA County Jails. The SHU in California is only at Pelican Bay, Tehachapi, and Corcoran prisons. There's Administrative Segregation (Ad-Seg) in jails and prisons but referring to it as the SHU would be wrong (unless it's some slang your character is using like "shoe box"). Saying your character went to the SHU for stabbing someone in jail doesn't make sense.

 

6. LA's jail is famous for its High Power unit which is reserved for inmates the staff don't want in general population. That's where a lot of notorious gang members, prison gang leaders, and security threats go to be housed. It's the equivalent of the SHU in a way.

 

7. Jail housing is separated by buildings, modules, rows, etc, and describing it by yard like they do in state prisons doesn't make much sense. So saying you "run the yard" might make sense in a prison setting but not so much in a jail setting. You run the module, unit, or tier, and so on, not the yard.

 

8. Surenos and Woods don't get along in jail as much as they do in state prison. This is more-so about LA County. In fact, back in the day woods coming in LA County jails would more often than not get straight up punked and have their shoes taken. If it wasn't the blacks doing it, it was the Surenos. They'd have it the worst when it came to doing their jail time (only rivaled by Asians). Southsiders at times even imposed a "kitty" to woods in their module/building. This was done to your unafilliated whites and woods, not the gang-affiliated (AB, NLR, Skinheads, etc) ones of course. Eventually Youngster from the Brand politicked and put a stop to it when he was there in the 90s on subpoena. I'm sure it's gotten more normal now, but the whole alliance thing is more prevalent in prison than jail. It's history worth acknowledging.

 

9. The whole taking off your shoes thing I do not understand.

 

10. You need to role play still going to state prison at the end of your sentence prior to going back out on the street (if you were doing a serious charge). Going to jail three times doesn't make you "hard" in the game world even if you've role played in twin towers for ages. If your character is a serious career criminal without state prison time, it looks out of whack. It would be weird to meet an AB or EME character whose only done county jail stints.

Edited May 5, 2021 by Gecko

[Dom.]

Great guide. Would love to see people stop calling TTCF a prison.