Reiner’s Plan to Trim Jail Crowds Gets Cool Reaction

A $7.4-million plan by Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner to reduce jail overcrowding by hiring 50 new prosecutors and keeping the courts open on Saturdays has met with mixed reaction from county officials.

The plan, presented last week by Deputy Dist. Atty. John Lynch to members of the jail overcrowding subcommittee of the Board of Supervisors, also calls for reductions in the number of trial postponements and greater enforcement of a law granting criminal cases priority over civil cases.

Postponements are granted for a variety of reasons, primarily because probation reports were not completed on time or because officials failed to transport defendants from jail to court.

The plan would also set up a system whereby senior prosecutors would determine whether cases should be thrown out before they reach trial.

‘Unambiguous Solution’

“It’s a simple, clear-cut, unambiguous solution to a problem that people say has no solution,” Reiner said. “We have to push cases through the system much more rapidly.”

But Frank S. Zolin, county clerk and executive officer of the Superior Court, said the situation is not as bad as Reiner stated. “Our basic data indicate that it isn’t feasible to accelerate dispositions (of backlogged cases) to any considerable extent,” he said. “We don’t believe we are going into a gridlock situation.”

Zolin based his argument on statistics that show that the number of criminal defendants awaiting trial “has remained relatively constant” for the last several years.

Even though the county’s daily jail population jumped from 9,000 inmates in 1980 to the current total of 17,000, the number of criminal defendants awaiting trial in Los Angeles County has remained at about 3,500, he said.

“The current counts of defendants awaiting trial have remained fairly stable, so statements that we are developing a big backlog of defendants are erroneous,” he said.

Reiner disagreed with Zolin, saying that the situation has reached a “crisis level” and must be resolved immediately. “With all of the prancing and dancing around the questions (from the subcommittee), what it comes down to is that the criminal justice system is approaching gridlock,” he said.

Reiner added that keeping the courts open on Saturdays would increase trial capacity by 20%, the equivalent of five new court buildings. “God knows how many megamillions that would cost,” he said.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Ed Edelman, who also chairs the Countywide Criminal Justice Coordination Committee, said in a telephone interview Friday that Reiner’s $7.4-million cost estimate fails to take into account his proposal’s impact on other county departments.

“I think we have to see how it impacts on the whole system,” Edelman said. “We only have a limited number of dollars that we can spread around here.”

Edelman said he will present an alternative plan to the jail subcommittee when it meets on Thursday. The plan, he said, calls for spending about $2 million less than Reiner’s proposal and will include costs to other county departments. It will also propose extending court hours into the evening, rather than keeping the courts open on Saturdays.

Reserving Judgment

But Edelman said he will reserve final judgment on Reiner’s plan until after the subcommittee makes its report to the full committee on Aug. 21.

Reiner’s proposal is not the first suggestion of ways to reduce overcrowding in county jails. In March, Sheriff Sherman Block wrote Los Angeles County Superior Court Presiding Judge Thomas T. Johnson that overcrowding was keeping his department from providing adequate medical and mental health care to jail inmates.

He said at the time that the courts should stay open at night and that trial postponements should be granted only when “absolutely necessary.” But Johnson maintained that the county does not have enough money to pay for additional staffing for night court.

Meanwhile, the county’s jails are barely able to accommodate the daily arrival of new prisoners. The current 17,000 inmates in county jails are about 6,000 more than the facilities were designed to handle.

According to the prosecutor’s report, criminal case filings have risen 51% since 1979, but the number of courts available to handle those cases has increased only 19%.

Many Await Sentencing

Statistics compiled by the county clerk’s office show that, of the 12,113 criminal defendants who have cases pending in Superior Court, 5,811 are in custody, and 30% of those have been convicted or have pleaded guilty and are awaiting probation reports and sentencing hearings.

Of that 30%, about half have been waiting longer than the 28-day legal maximum.

“That’s what’s happening to the jail,” Lynch said. “It’s just exploding.”

But Zolin, the county clerk, said he does not think the situation is so bad that criminal cases should be given a greater priority over civil cases than they already have.