Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center

Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center, also known as Pitchess Detention Center or simply Pitchess, is an all-male county detention center and correctional facility named in honor of Peter J. Pitchess located directly east of exit 173 off of Interstate 5 in the unincorporated community of Castaic in the County of Los Angeles in southern California.The 2,620 acre site was previously known as the Wayside Honor Rancho or the Wayside Jail (by which it is still sometimes known) and was nicknamed the Wayside Drunk Farm in the 1940s because of the large proportion of inmates serving time for alcohol-related offenses— when first built for prison use in 1938 it was a minimum-security facility where inmates worked on a farm setting. In 1983 it was renamed the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho. All farming operations were terminated in 1992 and the "rancho" component of the center was closed altogether in 1995 because of budgetary constraints, at which point it acquired its current name. It is run by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and is divided into a North Facility, East Facility, South Facility, and North County Correctional Facility, each managed under different levels of prison security. In its current designation it was designed to house approximately 8,600 men either awaiting hearings or trial on a variety of crimes (i.e., "detention") or parole violators with sentences of up to one year ("corrections"), the two groups collectively termed "inmates." As of 1998 it was the county's largest jail complex. It is also the oldest operating jail in the county. The Municipal and Superior courthouses where Pitchess inmates are taken for hearings and trials include Van Nuys, San Fernando, Burbank, Pasadena, Newhall, Antelope Valley, Malibu, and downtown Los Angeles.