Gates Faces Hearing on Crowding at Jail : Sheriff Must Show Why He Shouldn’t Be Held in Contempt of U.S. Court’s Orders

Sheriff Brad Gates on Tuesday was ordered back into federal court to explain why he has violated a judge’s orders prohibiting overcrowding at the Orange County Jail.

U.S. District Judge William P. Gray set a hearing for March 20 at which Gates must show why he should not be held in contempt of court for allowing the central jail’s population to exceed the 1,500-inmate limit set by Gray last year. The hearing will be held at the Orange County Courthouse.

The judge’s order was the result of a report filed last week by Lawrence G. Grossman, the court-appointed special master for the jail, showing that on three occasions between Feb. 18 and Feb 24 the jail housed more than 1,500 prisoners.

Gates said that the overcrowding cited by Grossman was partially the result of the three-day President’s Day weekend.

‘Dealing With 3-Day Holiday’

“I wouldn’t expect anything too severe to happen once the judge sees that we were dealing with a three-day holiday,” he said.

At almost the same time Gray was issuing his order Tuesday, Gates was meeting with the presiding judges of the county’s Municipal and Superior courts, the chief probation officer and County Administrative Officer Larry Parrish in an attempt to work out a solution to the overcrowding problem.

The meeting was intended to deal with “what alternatives are there” since, Gates said, “the judges have pretty much gone to the extent that they can in relieving the sentencing program.

“You get to a point where you just can’t put any more Band-Aids on the machine, so what do we do from here? We’re all getting to the point that the answer is a new building.”

Gates said that many people still think “we have a lot of misdemeanor inmates sitting in the main jail. But that hasn’t been the case for a long time. They are in the minimum security facilities, and what we’re dealing with is a number of inmates who can’t go anywhere else.”

No Decisions at Meeting

Parrish said the meeting “did not have any begging or shouting, no finger-pointing or buck-passing. It was a really positive meeting . . . a discussion among some people who have pieces of this problem.”

No decisions were made, he said, but “if there was agreement on anything, there was agreement that all of the alternatives to incarceration . . . are useful. But that is not going to solve the problem of a jail. What is going to solve the problem of a jail is a new jail.”

Grossman echoed Parrish’s comments in his latest biweekly report, which was filed with Gray last Wednesday.

“In order to meet the needs of Orange County’s correctional system, it seems to me that new jail construction is mandatory,” he said. “Unfortunately, it should have been under way years ago.”

Gray had found Gates and the county supervisors in contempt in March, 1985, for not heeding his 1978 order to improve jail conditions, largely by ending overcrowding. He levied fines against the county and used part of the money to pay Grossman, the court’s appointee.

New Facilities Were Built

At that time, the jail population was 2,000, and Gray subsequently ordered it to be cut to 1,500 by last Jan. 15 and 1,400 by April 1.

In an effort to comply with Gray’s order, the county built new facilities at two branch jails, but two weeks ago Gates warned supervisors of an “alarming increase in the inmate population” that would make it difficult to meet the April 1 deadline.