Windfall to Ease L.A. Jails’ Crowding

In a fix made possible by Los Angeles County’s roaring real estate market, the Sheriff’s Department on Monday was promised enough money to significantly ease overcrowding in the county’s teeming jails, a problem that has forced officials to release inmates early and has led to several killings behind bars.

About 200,000 inmates have been let out of Los Angeles County jails before their sentences were completed over the last three years, the vast majority after serving 10% of their terms.

Critics complained that the releases undermined the deterrent of jail and pointed out that in some cases, inmates who were released early went on to commit other crimes when they should have been incarcerated. Sheriff Lee Baca has insisted that he did not have the money to expand jail operations so that inmates would complete their sentences.

But on Monday, the county said it can afford the jail improvements thanks in part to an expected surge in property tax collections, which have soared along with home values.

With the extra money, Baca plans to begin hiring new deputies in the fiscal year that starts in July. By the fall of 2006, he hopes to reopen all the jail areas that have been closed to save money over the last three years.

“It’s a very important turnaround,” Baca said. “It’s taking a very serious problem and fixing it.”

The county expects a 6% increase in property taxes in the next year, adding an estimated $150 million to its coffers. That revenue, along with lower-than-expected workers’ compensation costs, helped officials budget the $68.5 million needed for the project, according to a county budget plan released Monday.

County supervisors, who have been among the most critical of the early release policy, are expected to enthusiastically back the jail improvements.

The county plans to hire 500 new deputies and add 4,474 new beds to the jail system, increasing the capacity by 25%. In addition to stemming the early releases, the Sheriff’s Department expects the extra deputies to improve security at the jails, where five inmates have allegedly been murdered in the last two years at the hands of fellow detainees.

The county plans to move high-risk offenders into the Twin Towers jail in downtown Los Angeles. Twin Towers, the newest of the county’s jails, was built as a high-security facility but houses lower-risk mentally ill inmates and female detainees. (In the past, the county had considered this arrangement less costly than moving high-risk offenders there.)

In addition, the new budget calls for hiring 63 additional deputies to perform regular safety checks of inmates. This comes in the wake of several serious security breaches in the last two years, including one in which an inmate managed to walk freely through the Men’s Central Jail before allegedly killing another prisoner to prevent him from testifying in his murder trial.

The jail funding was the biggest change in an $18.5-billion county budget plan released Monday, the first in several years that did not require significant belt-tightening. Among the other highlights:

* The district attorney’s office will receive an extra $5 million to hire 45 prosecutors.

* The Probation Department will get an additional $11.9 million to enhance programs for delinquent youngsters and improve care at juvenile halls.

* Unincorporated areas of the county, home to 1 million residents, also stand to gain from next year’s budget. Under the proposal, they will see three new libraries, improved security at public parks and the restoration of a community-policing program through the Sheriff’s Department.

* The county will set aside $40 million to help its financially troubled public healthcare system, though some supervisors said they do not consider the amount enough to deal with hospitals’ looming deficits.

Baca began releasing jail inmates early in June 2002 amid a round of cutbacks by the Board of Supervisors brought about in part by rising workers’ compensation and litigation costs.

At first, nonviolent offenders were the only ones set free after serving more than half their time. But as the financial outlook worsened, the Sheriff’s Department started releasing car thieves, stalkers and drunk drivers -- all but the most serious offenders -- after only a fraction of their sentences.

“It was the most painful thing I ever had to do in my career as a sheriff,” Baca said.

“Judges send someone to jail and it has no effect on the behavior of the offender because the threat is just not there. I do believe that you need to have that stick to enforce the punishment. The county stick was taken away from me,” he said.

The Board of Supervisors voted in December to give Baca enough money over the next three years to reopen 1,778 beds. In March, sheriff’s deputies opened up a floor of the Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center’s East Portion in Castaic, adding 760 beds.

The additional space allowed sheriff’s deputies last week to start lengthening the stay of inmates convicted of assault from 10% of their sentences to 25%, said Sheriff’s Chief Marc Klugman, who heads the department’s Correctional Services Division.

“Your lesser crimes, your petty crimes, may still do less time,” Klugman said. “But as we create more bed space, we hope that those committing the more serious offenses, the more violent offenses, will do more time, building to 100%.”

But much more money was needed to fully restore the jail system’s 22,000-bed capacity. To end the early release of inmates, the department must add about 4,500 beds by reopening all of the Century Regional Detention Center in Lynwood and the Pitchess facility.

The budget would provide enough money to finally do that, Baca said.

Once all the deputies are in place, he expects all inmates to serve their full terms, except in occasional periods when arrests rise dramatically.

The plan, which the Board of Supervisors will consider in the coming months, won praise from prosecutors and county supervisors.

Terree A. Bowers, chief deputy at the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, decried the effect early releases have had on the criminal justice system. Some prosecutors, he said, watched helplessly as witnesses refused to cooperate for fear that offenders would soon be released.

Because of the early releases, some convicted drug users and spousal abusers preferred a jail sentence to entering a rehabilitation program because they expected to be freed early after just a few days, he said.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky praised county administrators for finding the money for the jails but noted that the Board of Supervisors has no control over how Baca spends his money once it is allocated. Yaroslavsky urged the sheriff to use the money as it is intended.

“I expect the sheriff, having been given the [funds] for jails, will use them on jails and not use them on other things,” he said. “The jail issue is a No. 1 priority.”

A major factor for the county’s rosy budget picture is escalating real estate values. Last year, the county took in $2.5 billion in property tax revenues. This year, the county expects to take in nearly $2.7 billion.

Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said the budget, which takes effect July 1, includes $565 million more to spend -- much of it on public safety.

Janssen hailed the budget as one of “stability and restoration,” though he noted that the spending plan does not take into account any cuts that might come from the state or federal government.

His spending plan drew immediate fire for largely sidestepping the looming financial health crisis that is expected to plunge the Department of Health Services $435 million into the red within two years.

Yaroslavsky criticized the proposal, noting that it calls for nearly 1,700 new county employees but provides little to prop up its ailing healthcare system.

“This budget ignores that and spends money as though we don’t have other problems,” he said.

“When we have to pay the fiscal piper in the Health Department, we’re going to look back and say, ‘Why did we do this?’ ”