1986: Inmates Celebrate

The five bar mitzvah "boys," all men in their 30s and 40s, were inmates at the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp at Boron. Convicts have long found religion in prison. But the state and federal chaplain service could find no record of a bar mitzvah held inside a state or federal prison in California before this one in May... All the rituals were observed, including the donning of phylacteries and the Torah reading…Thanking the rabbis and the gift shop owner who donated the books, Mordecai, 39, told the inmates, "the Jewish community has not forgotten you."

Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1986