County Seeks Voters’ OK of Bonds for More Jail Beds

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to place on the Nov. 4 ballot a $96-million bond issue that would finance more than 4,600 adult and juvenile facility beds in the county’s overcrowded detention system.

The bond measure, if approved by at least two-thirds of the county’s voters, would provide matching money for state funds authorized in recent years by California voters.

County officials have expressed confidence that public concern over jail and juvenile facility overcrowding has reached a point where the necessary two-thirds vote can be reached. They pointed to the better than 2-to-1 victory margin that voters provided for a state jail bond measure on the ballot last June as evidence that the county measure has an equally good chance of passage.

One expected selling point in the upcoming campaign is that the bonds will cost the average property owner only about $11 a year in additional property taxes.

700 Beds for Juveniles

If approved, the bonds will provide funding for 3,432 additional adult male beds at four county jail facilities; 512 adult female beds at Mira Loma honor ranch and 700 beds for juveniles at two county locations.

For years, the county has suffered overcrowding at all its adult and juvenile facilities. The problem grew to such proportions that civil rights lawyers took the county to court, eventually winning an agreement to reduce the inmate population at the Men’s Central Jail by Nov. 19.

Despite the agreement, officials recently predicted that even with new bond measures, the county will not be able to keep up with the demand for new beds. In a report, Chief Administrative Officer James Hankla said that by 1990, the county will be shy of projected needs by more than 8,000 adult jail cells and nearly 900 juvenile treatment beds.

Passage of the Nov. 4 ballot measure would greatly reduce the shortage of projected juvenile beds and even leave some empty, said county Probation Department chief Barry Nidorf.