Jail Site Quest Continues

It was Yogi Berra of baseball fame who once observed that “it’s never over till it’s over.” That pretty much sums up the overcrowded conditions at the Orange County Jail and last week’s efforts finally to correct them.

After eight years of indecision, the county Board of Supervisors Tuesday selected a site on Katella Avenue in Anaheim, just half a mile from Anaheim Stadium, to build a maximum security jail to hold up to 1,500 prisoners.

It was one of four sites, none ideal, that would enable the county to follow its “fast-track” approach that calls for using county-owned property and existing plans to build a smaller jail as soon as possible to ease the overcrowding at the main County Jail in Santa Ana.

No new jail location would have been acceptable to everyone, but of those available, the one on Katella Avenue was probably the best considering size, population densities, nearby schools and other neighborhood factors.

Despite that decision, however, the jail problem isn’t over.

What the county board must now do, in addition to getting the jail in Anaheim built as soon as possible, is step up its search for a site in a remote area of the county for a larger jail to hold 5,000 prisoners. Past studies have indicated that the county will need an additional 2,681 jail beds by 1990 and more than 4,200 more by 2000.

The impetus for Tuesday’s decision came from U.S. District Judge William P. Gray. Last year he held the sheriff and county in contempt for not easing jail overcrowding. He had set a hearing for last Thursday to decide whether to hold Sheriff Brad Gates in contempt again for having more than 1,500 prisoners in the jail on three separate days last month in violation of the ceiling set by the judge. The county feared what he might do.

Judge Gray let the sheriff off with a stern warning about not letting the jail population, under any circumstances, go over the 1,500 maximum. He also, wisely, admonished the sheriff and county board that he was “going to keep pushing until a final solution is accomplished,” adding that “even if someone is guilty of a crime, the county must assume the cost and obligation of a confinement fit for a human being.”

The judge should maintain that pressure. More jail space is needed and also a greater emphasis on diversion programs, especially those that put people arrested on charges related to alcohol abuse into detoxification and place the mentally ill in appropriate mental health centers instead of jail cells. All of the diverse responses are required to meet the judge’s demand for “confinement fit for a human being.”