Mix-up Has 3 Sex Offenders Serve Time at Honor Farm

Three convicted sex offenders were mistakenly jailed at the county’s minimum-security honor farm near El Toro last month and served parts of their sentences there before the error was discovered, county Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez said Monday.

The mistake in the classification process came at a time when the system by which Sheriff Brad Gates determines which inmates are sent to which of the three county jails was being questioned on other grounds.

In a separate development Monday involving the county’s other branch jail, the Theo Lacy facility in Orange, two Orange City Council members said the number of new beds proposed to be added at Lacy, 1,016, is far higher than county officials led them to believe.

‘Confirmed the Worst’

Vasquez said in a letter to Gates that a resident of the El Toro/Lake Forest area asked him last Thursday to look into a report she had received that three convicted child molesters were lodged at the James A. Musick honor farm. The supervisor said Undersheriff Raul Ramos on Friday “confirmed the worst.”

Vasquez said one of the men was at the honor farm 59 days, another for 39 days and the third for 30 days.

“Although your office immediately removed these inmates from Musick, the fact that this error occurred is a sad commentary on our jail system,” Vasquez said in the letter.

“It is unfortunate that this incident occurred at a time when our credibility is being questioned and the siting of future facilities is at hand.”

Lt. Richard J. Olson, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman, said sex offenders are not supposed to be sent to Musick. He said the county Probation Department had assigned the three to the work-furlough program, in which inmates hold their normal jobs during the day and spend nights and weekends behind bars.

“At the present time our people are checking to see how (the three men) slipped through our fingers and put a dual check in the system to see it doesn’t happen again,” Olson said.

Gates’ inmate classification system, in which his department determines which inmates are sent to which jail facility, was a key part of court proceedings that ended last Thursday with the sheriff being convicted of contempt of court by Presiding Municipal Court Judge Gary P. Ryan.

Ryan convicted Gates for not incarcerating six men ordered arrested on warrants by judges, although there were empty beds at Musick on the March days when the men were brought to the jail.

Only Sentenced Inmates

Gates argued in court documents that a federal judge has imposed limits on how many inmates can be housed at the main men’s jail in Santa Ana and that he has to abide by that. He said only sentenced inmates can be sent to Musick and only if they are low-risk convicts and not a threat to the community. He said none of the inmates at the main jail or Lacy met his department’s criteria for transfer to Musick.

Outside of court, Gates has said that his system for classifying which inmates should be kept at the maximum-security main jail and which should be sent to Musick and Theo Lacy Jail in Orange is working well.

Lacy, which holds men awaiting trial and men convicted and sentenced, is rated a medium- to minimum-security facility, while Musick is minimum to very low-security. Last week’s court documents said men convicted of violent crimes are barred from serving their sentences at Lacy, as are “aggressive homosexuals, gang members, police informants” and others.

Vasquez’s disclosure came when county supervisors were stressing that if Lacy is expanded as proposed, it will house the same type of inmates already there, meaning other than maximum-security inmates.

Councilman ‘Shocked’

Lacy, which currently has 720 beds, would get another 1,016 in four additional buildings under an expansion proposed by the county.

Orange City Councilman Don Smith said he was “shocked” by the number. He said that county officials “had talked of a possible few (additional beds) or something, no commitments or anything. But a thousand beds is certainly not a few hundred or something. That’s a big jail. So that really bothers me.

“I’ve got to know a lot more about it, but if you’re asking me about a thousand beds, that shocks me.”

City Councilwoman Joanne Coontz said she had been led to believe that the number of beds added would be one-third to one-half the number now proposed.

She also expressed concern, as Mayor Jess F. Perez did on Friday, that areas near Orange are on a list of four sites being considered for a large jail that could hold 5,000 prisoners or more.

Known as ‘Jail City’

“We don’t want to be known as ‘jail city,’ ” Coontz said. If the county chooses Fremont Canyon or the Irvine Lake area for the 5,000-inmate, so-called remote jail, it “could destroy . . . the potential recreational and residential potential of the area,” Coontz said.

But Board of Supervisors Chairman Roger R. Stanton said county staff members have “tried to come up with a number of viable alternatives” to solve jail overcrowding problems, “and I think this (Lacy expansion) is one of them.

“It certainly makes sense in terms of speed,” Stanton said.

County officials estimated that the four buildings at Lacy, if approved, could be built in a year. The remote jail would not be ready until 1992 at the earliest.

The problem of where to locate new jails and whether to expand existing jails is a political hot potato, with nearby residents always concerned about security, as Vasquez noted in his letter to Gates about the mix-up that sent the sex offenders to the Musick honor farm.

Predicated on Integrity

“The community of Lake Forest/El Toro has been patient and tolerant of expansion and changes at the facility,” Vasquez said. “That patience has been predicated on the integrity of the system and the assurances of the Board (of Supervisors) and sheriff.

“While I recognize that this incident flies in the face of board policy and your own classification policies, I urge you to take immediate corrective action for purposes of preventing a recurrence. This incident should be isolated and the breaches in process should be dealt with swiftly and decisively.

“My disappointment is surpassed only by the fact that a resident of the area was my source of information and that our own system failed to detect the inmates over a period of nearly 60 days. . . .”

As an aide to Supervisor Bruce Nestande several years ago, Vasquez met frequently with Musick-area residents about the branch jail. He was appointed supervisor himself on April 10, succeeding Nestande, who resigned.

‘Weaken That Trust’

Vasquez said he and the sheriff met with the community in efforts aimed at “building their trust on assurances and guarantees. This incident will do nothing but weaken that trust and heighten the community’s concerns.”