County : Supervisors Give OK to House-Arrest Program

The Board of Supervisors gave the go-ahead Tuesday for an experimental house-arrest program under which some inmates will serve sentences at home--with electronic devices being used to make sure they stay there--rather than in the overcrowded County Jail.

Officials said the program, which could begin as early as November, will cost an estimated $116,772 for one year and include 25 inmates at a time.

Inmates in the county work-furlough program, who currently work at their usual jobs during the day and spend nights in the jail, would be eligible for at-home incarceration. The program would be restricted to inmates who are not drug abusers, violent or a serious threat to the community, and who follow jail rules.

A report said inmates in the new program will have served half of their sentences and still have 30 days or more to serve. They will have to be residents of the county, have telephones at home and be working full-time.

The county Probation Department will operate the at-home jail program. Probation officers or a computer will telephone inmates’ homes to confirm they are there, and inmates will insert electronic wristlets into verifier boxes in response.

Supervisors have been looking for methods to ease overcrowding in the main men’s jail in Santa Ana since last year, when a federal judge found them and the sheriff in contempt of court for not complying with the judge’s 1978 order to improve conditions in the jail.