County Erects Tents to Ease Crowded Jail

The vinyl walls of Orange County’s four new jail tents were erected at the James A. Musick Honor Farm near El Toro Tuesday, and 200 inmates are scheduled to be moved into them Saturday.

The tents, which will be equipped with running water, wood floors, TV dayrooms and even intercoms, are part of the county’s effort to comply with a federal court order to relieve overcrowding at the men’s jail in downtown Santa Ana.

The 200 inmates going to Musick will not be from the crowded County Jail in Santa Ana, but rather from the Theo Lacy branch jail in Orange, which is generally used for lower-risk prisoners. The resulting vacancies at Lacy will be filled, about a week later, with inmates from the main jail.

The men going to Musick from Lacy will include 50 full-time sentenced inmates and 150 who work during the week but are sentenced to weekends in jail.

All of the men going to Musick, or any going from the main jail to Lacy, will be sentenced inmates already classified as acceptable for minimum security detention, Sheriff Brad Gates said Tuesday.

In addition to the inmate shift, Gates said he will transfer 50 jail deputies to Musick to help officials there operate the tent village. Gates added he will use deputies on overtime and some reserve officers for the next few weeks to make up for the 50-man loss at the main jail.

“We’re looking at quite an adjustment, and it’s going to be a strain on our system right now,” Gates said. “But we’re going to make it work.”

Within a month after the first 200 inmates arrive at Musick, they will be joined by 250 more. That would fill the four tents being erected just south of the administration building. Three months later, the tents are to be replaced by more permanent, trailerlike buildings a few hundred feet further south.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved the hiring of 67 additional staff members for the Musick facility to cope with the increased population. But Gates said it could take several months to hire all of them.

Once the 450-man shift to Musick is completed, Gates said, there should be no inmates at the main men’s jail without a bunk to sleep on.

Gates and the supervisors’ efforts to reduce overcrowding at the men’s jail come in the wake of a March 18 criminal contempt order by U.S. District Judge William P. Gray. In a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, Gray fined the county $50,000, plus $10 a day for each inmate who has to sleep on the floor more than one night.

$3,000 a Day in Fines

Gray stayed the $10-a-day fine for 60 days, but when it began last month, county officials estimated that they were chalking up about $3,000 a day in fines.

When Gray issued his March 18 order, about 500 inmates were forced to sleep on the floor because of overcrowding at the men’s jail. Its population was at the 2,000 level, with only 1,530 bunks.

Now the jail has 1,557 bunks, and the daily prisoner count this week has been about 1,800. About 40% of the main jail inmates are serving prison sentences. The rest of the inmates are awaiting trial and would not be eligible for transfer to either Lacy or Musick.

Gray has ordered a hearing on Monday--”to see where we stand,” he has told attorneys involved.

“We’re hopeful that the judge will see the effort we’ve made and will waive any fines that might have accumulated,” Gates said.

There are six new tents in all, which total about 20,000 square feet. Four are for inmate housing, one is for staff and one is a kitchen facility. Trailers will be installed alongside each tent so inmates will have showers and flush toilets, according to sheriff’s officials. Some of the bunks the inmates will have to use had been placed in storage after removal from the main jail because of their poor condition. But jail officials said the bunks with bad springs would be replaced in a few weeks when new bunks are scheduled to arrive.

Switched to Wood Floors

Gates had planned to use the same polyvinyl chloride material the tents are made of as a floor, but he switched to wood floors last week at the strong urging of county health officials.

Dr. Rex Ehling, county health officer, said he was pleased that Gates made the change because it would help provide sanitary conditions in the tents. Ehling said his office planned to inspect the Musick site today to make sure there were no health problems connected with the temporary structures.

Right now, Ehling said, he knows of no problems.

The tents are fire resistant and tornado proof, according to Charles A. Ballantyne, a spokesman for Sprung Instant Structures Inc., which is installing them for the county.

Gates examined the row of tents Tuesday and said he was satisfied that they would be comfortable for the inmates.

Carefully Screen Arrestees

“Any of them who don’t like it here and can’t comply with the rules here are always welcome to return to the main jail,” he said.

Gates reduced the population at the main jail immediately after the March 18 court order by refusing to keep federal and state prisoners for more than a day or two. He also encouraged police agencies in the county to carefully screen the arrestees they were sending to the jail.

Two weeks ago, Gates transferred some inmates to Musick from Lacy, neither of which were at capacity. That allowed him to move nearly 100 inmates from the main jail to Lacy.

The 67 new workers at Musick will cost about $2.2 million annually, said Norb Puff, the senior analyst in charge of jail matters for the county administrative office.

Puff said the money would come from an additional $5 million the supervisors will be asked to budget in the fiscal year starting July 1 to cover the cost of complying with Gray’s order.

57 New Workers

The same fund will pay $919,699 approved by the supervisors for the hiring of 57 new workers for Lacy.

A month after Gray’s March 18 order, the supervisors set up a $3-million account, fed by contingency funds, to pay fines imposed and provide money for other solutions to the overcrowding problem.

Puff said the $3-million fund paid for the trailerlike units to be used at Musick, which will cost $1.6 million, plus an additional $500,000 to install them. He said it cost about $340,000 for a four-month lease of the tents erected Tuesday as immediate temporary housing.

In addition, the supervisors approved spending $138,000 for 240 three-tier bunks for the main jail. While Gray has approved the use of tents for housing inmates, he has not yet given approval for the triple bunks.

Gates said Tuesday that even after the more permanent trailerlike units are installed, he will probably keep two of the tents in operation for emergency situations.