Orange County Officials Plan to Expand Lacy Jail

Orange County officials are planning to add 1,018 beds to the Theo Lacy branch jail in Orange, more than doubling its size and perhaps killing the controversial proposed jail near Anaheim Stadium, officials said Friday.

Dan Wooldridge, an aide to county Supervisor Don R. Roth, said four buildings could be built at Theo Lacy within a year at an estimated cost of $30 million, with about $25 million paid for with state funds.

The Anaheim jail, proposed for a site at Katella Avenue and Douglass Road, carries an estimated price tag of $140 million or more, would house 1,500 inmates and is ineligible for state funds.

“There will be some heat that will come” with the plans for the expansion of Lacy, Wooldridge said. But he said the county will assure the City of Orange that the added inmates will not increase the danger to the community.

Roth, who said the plans are “very preliminary,” emphasized safety considerations too, saying he wants to ensure that inmates filling the new beds would not be greater threats to the community than those now housed at Lacy.

Lacy is rated as an intermediate- to low-security facility. The main men’s jail in Santa Ana, focus of the overcrowding dispute, is a maximum security facility.

Orange Mayor Jess F. Perez said the city needs “facts and figures and plans and timetable” for the proposed construction, and that until officials receive those from the county, “I will be speaking in opposition.”

Perez hinted that a deal could be worked out, saying that if the county ruled out two sites near Orange for a 5,000-inmate jail that is being planned, “it would allow us to further investigate” the possibility of expanding Lacy.

The sites Perez opposes are in Fremont Canyon and near Irvine Lake. Two other sites proposed for the huge “remote” jail are Chiquita Canyon and Coal/Gypsum Canyon. The supervisors are scheduled to pick one for the facility, which could open in 1992, at the end of June.

Although the Orange City Council originally pledged $10,000 to help the legal fight against the Anaheim site, they backed off when opponents of that site failed to support Orange’s opposition to Fremont Canyon and Irvine Lake for the second jail location.

Officials cautioned that after the Theo Lacy plans are officially announced, probably Monday, there will be a period for public comment and more time will be needed before supervisors give the project formal approval.

The expansion plan was drawn up by the county administrative office, which for months has been consulting with supervisors and their aides and with representatives of the General Services and Environmental Management agencies and the Sheriff’s Department on ways to add more jail beds in the county.

Supervisors and the City of Orange will be formally notified of the plan next week with the issuance of a “negative declaration,” a statement giving a general rundown of the expansion and pronouncing it exempt from some environmental documentation because it is not a new use of property but rather an expansion of an existing use.

The Lacy branch jail is part of a county complex that includes an animal shelter, Juvenile Hall and Probation Department headquarters. Known as the “Manchester complex,” it is on City Drive across from a large shopping mall.

The branch jail now has 720 dormitory-style beds. It holds male inmates who are waiting for trial or who have been sentenced to serve terms of less than one year and are classified as intermediate to low security.

The jail was expanded last year when a building with 208 beds was added.

Another branch jail, the James A. Musick branch near El Toro, has more than 900 beds now, and plans call for adding 360 more.

City Sued County

Last year the supervisors picked the site near Anaheim Stadium for a jail scheduled to open in 1990. Roth, then Anaheim mayor and now supervisor of the district that includes both Lacy and the Anaheim site, vehemently opposed the supervisors’ action. The city has since sued the county to block construction.

Roth said that if Lacy is expanded, “that doesn’t say that’s the end of (the) Katella-Douglass (site) by a long shot.” But county officials said the cost of the facility near Anaheim Stadium will probably mean that it will not be built.

“The handwriting is on the wall,” Wooldridge said. “It’s in bright letters, and it’s in Braille.” But until “we’re sure this (Lacy) project is a go” and the federal judge does not object to dropping the Anaheim site, the county will leave Katella-Douglass on the drawing board, he said.

Disclosure of the Lacy expansion plan came a day after Sheriff Brad Gates was found in contempt of court by Presiding Municipal Judge Gary P. Ryan for not incarcerating six men on days in March when there were empty beds in the branch jails.

Gates had contended that some beds had to be left empty to house inmates serving sentences on weekends and that others were not filled because they were low security beds unsuitable for maximum-security inmates.

Ryan told Gates to “rework” his system for classifying inmates and to appear for sentencing June 1 with an explanation of what had been done to find more beds.

Gates and the county supervisors were found in contempt of court two years ago by a federal judge for having too many inmates in the main jail, contrary to the judge’s 1978 ruling.

Since 1985, the county has expanded the branch jails, proceeded with construction of another jail due to open this summer that will house about 700 inmates, allowed some convicts to serve their sentences at home and freed others three to five days early.