Neighbors Object to Jail Transfer Plan

“Attention Local Residents,” the cardboard bulletin board sign reads outside the El Cariso roadside country store in Riverside County. “Did you know Los Pinos Camp is going to be an ‘adult’ facility! to house three to four hundred men. WE DO NOT want this to occur. We want to fight this action.”

Propped on the checkout counter beside beef jerky jars inside the shop, a few miles south of Lake Elsinore, another village bulletin states: “Please help us fight Orange County! In two weeks they will begin lodging prisoners from Orange County Jail on this mountain at the Los Pinos Youth facility. Inquire within.”

And behind the counter sits Carol Jillson, owner and manager of the country store, talking on the phone, kibitzing with local customers, ready to take names.

On Saturday, she and several other townsfolk were preparing to wage a village uprising against the big shots.

Petition Campaign

Jillson and the rest of her loosely formed team are gathering signatures for a petition opposing the transfer of an estimated 200 minimum-security adult jail inmates to “our mountain.”

“It’s sort of like they want to dump their trash in our yard,” Jillson said, looking toward the tree-lined winding road on which it takes a traveler at least an hour to reach central Orange County. “We’re so far out here, we don’t really belong to anyone. That’s our problem,” she said.

An Orange County panel recommended Friday that 200 adult jail inmates be housed in the gymnasium at the Los Pinos Forestry Camp to relieve extreme overcrowding at the Orange County Jail in Santa Ana.

The six-member panel--appointed by the Orange County Board of Supervisors two months ago after a federal judge ordered a reduction in the jail’s population--made the recommendation in a report Friday. The report states that the main jail in Santa Ana will be unable to meet a federal judge’s May 17 deadline to reduce overcrowding.

The panel said that about 400 more beds must be found to reduce the jail population, as ordered March 18 by U.S. District Judge William P. Gray in Los Angeles. Gray found the county in contempt of court for violating his 1978 order to improve conditions at the jail, and fined the county $50,000. He stayed imposition for 60 days of an additional fine of $10 per day for each inmate forced to sleep on the floor for more than one night.

It would take at least 4 1/2 months to get the Los Pinos facility ready for the 200 inmates if complete environmental reports are needed, the panel’s report says. Los Pinos, which is on federal land and run by the Orange County Probation Department, houses about 80 juveniles who are enrolled in high school and vocational training.

The panel emphasizes in its report that use of the Los Pinos camp, which would cost more than $600,000 a year, would be temporary and that it would house adult minimum-security inmates. Adults and juveniles would be separated.