Sheriff Wants to Save Jails’ Space to House Felony Suspects

Because of a lack of jail space, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is urging its deputies and police from other agencies to release, rather than lock up, as many minor offenders as possible.

“Law enforcement’s role has long been that of placing people in custody rather than advocating release mechanisms,” Sheriff Sherman Block said in a recent letter to all police agencies in Los Angeles County. “Times and circumstances now dictate a broader approach. . . .”

Block said his department releases about 90% of the misdemeanor suspects it arrests in return for their promise to appear in court.

He urged other police agencies to do the same.

Figure Clarified

Sheriff’s officials later clarified Block’s figure, saying the department actually releases about 90% of the misdemeanor suspects it legally can. The distinction is significant because some of the suspects have warrants that require law enforcement officers to hold them pending an appearance before a judge. When that group is taken into account, the department’s release figure drops to about 65%.

Those now being released immediately, or after a few hours in custody, have been arrested on suspicion of such crimes as assault and battery, disturbing the peace, shoplifting, drunk driving and marijuana possession. They also include drunks who are picked up in public places and allowed to sleep off the effects of alcohol at a station house before they are released without being charged.

Block said in a recent interview that he worries that the quick releases cause people, including some of his own deputies, to lose faith in the criminal justice system.

“Somebody who sees somebody arrested or has somebody arrested and then very quickly sees that person right back out on the streets, it makes them wonder what’s happening with the system,” the sheriff said.

Serious Drawback

“One of the serious side effects I see to this is that people the next time may be reluctant to call (the police) on a situation that perhaps really requires notification . . . , saying ‘Why bother?’ ”

However, he said, there is no choice but to release accused minor criminals whenever possible to make room in jails for accused major criminals. “If everybody who could be held was held, we’d have to use the Coliseum or someplace,” Block said.

The Sheriff’s Department, which polices a wide swath of Los Angeles County, also runs the county’s jails, where the population has soared from 8,000 to more than 22,000 in less than a decade.

The character of that population also has changed, the sheriff said, with more serious offenders taking the place of people suspected of minor crimes.

“What has happened,” Block said in the interview, “is that people who used to go to the state prison . . . are now being housed in the county jails, and the kind of people that used to make up the bulk of the population of the county jails are now the ones that are being . . . released (on their promise to appear in court).”

30-Year-Old Law

Authority for the releases comes mainly from a 30-year-old state law that Block traced to legislators’ concern for civil liberties rather than jail overcrowding.

“There was a feeling in Sacramento that there was no need to subject certain kinds of offenders--those who didn’t pose a threat to the community--to the booking process, and put them in jail and force them to bail out,” he said.

Initially, the law gave police the choice of using citations, similar to traffic tickets, to release people after their arrest. But in 1984, legislators made the law stronger, requiring police to release misdemeanor suspects unless there was a good reason to jail them until they could be brought before a judge.

The permissible reasons for jailing a suspect, spelled out by legislators, included failure of the suspect to identify himself adequately and a conclusion by police that there was a reasonable likelihood that he would continue his crime if let go.

Even before the law began requiring releases, the Sheriff’s Department freed a majority of the misdemeanor suspects it arrested who did not have warrants against them, Block said.

“I would say we have traditionally averaged about 70%,” he said. But by 1986, the department had increased its “cite-outs” to 80%, the sheriff said.

First Call Issued

It was then that Block first issued a call to other law enforcement agencies to follow suit.

In a letter similar to the one he mailed this month, he wrote: “This department has exhausted all its avenues for easing inmate population levels. We now must actively seek your assistance.”

Block requested that other local police agencies keep most prisoners at their own station houses, rather than at county jails, until time to take them to court, and “cite-out” misdemeanor suspects whenever possible.

He said in the interview that cooperation from other police agencies has been “outstanding,” and that he renewed his call this month because he felt a need to clarify certain Sheriff’s Department policies on booking procedures.

However, the largest of the other agencies, the Los Angeles Police Department, makes far less use of the cite-out law than the Sheriff’s Department.

Los Angeles police quickly release about 66% of the misdemeanor suspects they arrest, according to the office of the chief of police. That number comes from a four-week sample of non-warrant misdemeanor arrests in 1985.

Smaller Percentage

However, nearly a third of that 66% are released only after they post bail. When these are not counted as cite-out releases, the Police Department’s cite-out percentage drops to 47%.

By contrast, those posting bail account for only about 3% of Sheriff’s Department misdemeanor releases.

“The sheriff believes that we do not interpret the law as liberally as they do . . . ,” said Deputy Police Chief Bernard C. Parks. “They believe that we could . . . release more people. . . . We tend to be more conservative, particularly on the issue of maintaining custody on someone who may continue the crime.”

Differences in outlooks may be traceable to who has the responsibility for housing misdemeanor suspects. “The sheriff, having the housing problem for the whole county, by necessity views it differently,” Parks said.