Jail Crowding Spawns Private Lockup, Prison Ship Plans

As public officials remain stymied in their search for solutions to San Diego County’s jail crowding crisis, entrepreneurs are beginning to assert that the private sector has at least some of the answers.

A few weeks ago, a Pomona firm proposed docking a refitted Navy hospital ship in San Diego Harbor as a pre-arraignment detention center.

Even more recently, local businessmen suggested establishing a string of small, privately operated “restitution centers” in which convicted offenders would serve their terms cleaning roads and parks or doing other public service work.

What the proposals have in their favor is that they would allow local government to house more prisoners than the existing, overtaxed jail system can handle--and without a costly brick-and-mortar investment in new construction.

Working against the entrepreneurial initiatives, however, is that the public agencies grappling with the jail problem don’t see the proposals as workable remedies to a crunch that at times sees the county’s jails operating at more than double their state-rated capacity.

Chuck Pennell, chief county jail planner, said Tuesday that neither proposal addresses the inmate segment at the core of the overcrowding problem--the potentially dangerous accused offenders in pretrial detention who comprise about 80% of the jail population.

Instead, both the floating pre-arraignment center proposed by Behavioral Systems Southwest Inc. and the post-trial lockups offered by private jail proponent Jerry Day would house offenders who are released, held in county honor camps or otherwise accommodated outside the six jam-packed county jails, Pennell said.

“These proposals are really asking the county to come up with a larger amount of money to provide a level of service that is not now being presently served,” he said.

Ships Rejected in Past

Meanwhile, the Sheriff’s Department, which operates the jails, is more interested in finding the money to build conventional detention centers staffed by sheriff’s deputies than in exploring non-traditional private alternatives, according to Lt. John Tenwolde, a department spokesman.

The concept of using old military vessels as detention facilities has been rejected in the past by county jail experts, Tenwolde noted. More broadly, he said, the Sheriff’s Department does not consider privately operated jails “a viable option.”

“The focus of our attention is on acquiring additional jail space wherein sheriff’s deputies, as mandated by law, supervise prisoners,” he said.

For now, a proposal to build a 600-bed temporary jail for male prisoners adjacent to the Las Colinas women’s jail in Santee is getting the most attention in county criminal justice circles. But it also is drawing harsh criticism from Santee civic leaders and residents, who oppose a dramatically expanded inmate population so close to the city’s long-planned downtown redevelopment project.

Proponents of both of the recent private jail alternatives say their plans could defuse such “not-in-my-backyard” sentiment.

Day--a former security guard who has been associated for the last 2 1/2 years with a succession of private work-furlough centers for nonviolent probationers--contends his proposal for opening a number of small jails scattered around the county would benefit, not threaten, the centers’ neighbors.

The sentenced, nonviolent offenders who would be housed at the centers would work 40 hours per week on clean-up or fix-up brigades under strict supervision--collecting trash in parks or on roadsides, painting elderly residents’ homes and doing other public service tasks.

“I’m not setting up a jail in your neighborhood,” Day said Tuesday. “I’m bringing a work force into your neighborhood.”

Restitution Fund

His plan, submitted to county supervisors, judges and other officials late last month, would begin with the opening of a single center for 60 to 75 prisoners at a downtown location. It calls for regular, on-site supervision by a deputy sheriff and compliance with all the safety rules imposed on state halfway houses--measures designed to counter criticisms of private work-furlough centers, which operate outside formal legal strictures with little formal supervision.

Day said he can operate the program for $28 to $30 daily per prisoner--less than the $35 to $40 he said it costs the county to house inmates in a public jail. Even at the lower cost, his program would pass along $1 or $2 for each day of public service work to a crime victims’ restitution fund, thus justifying use of the name “restitution centers” for the plan.

Behavioral Systems Southwest figures that no one can be offended if prisoners are jailed in an old hospital ship tied up in a Navy yard somewhere in San Diego Harbor.

“The boat is the best solution,” said Barry Rubin, regional vice president of the company. “It’s the only solution that would not impact a neighborhood.”

Refitting a decommissioned hospital ship is the most offbeat of several options that the firm recently submitted to the San Diego Police Department for housing 400 to 600 criminal suspects awaiting arraignment in the county courts.

Like Day’s center, Rubin’s boat--or a building converted by the company for jail use--would be staffed by private-sector employees, not sheriff’s deputies. It too would be under constant supervision by Sheriff’s Department employees, however. Rubin said Tuesday it would cost $26 to $28 daily to house an inmate in a floating jail, again less than the county’s current costs.

But there would be no saving under either plan if the space they offered would add prisoners to the county’s jail population rather than accommodate the kinds of inmates who now sleep on floors or in the day rooms of the county’s jails, noted Pennell, the county jail planner.

Hard-Core Prisoners

Offenders convicted of less serious crimes and people accused of misdemeanors for the most part have already been crowded out of the jails over the past year, leaving the six detention centers teeming with a population more hard core than the one the entrepreneurs are willing to serve, he explained. The relatively few less-hardened inmates are needed in the jails to work as trustees, according to Pennell.

“People don’t fully understand who’s in the jail,” Pennell said. The private-sector proposals are “addressing a population that’s not the one causing us the most problems,” he added.

Nonetheless, Pennell said he expects the proposals to receive careful scrutiny from county officials. And the San Diego City Council’s public service and safety committee is scheduled to weigh private jail alternatives at a meeting next week.