Sheriff to Release 1,200 Prisoners to Ease Jail Crowding

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, in response to a federal court directive to control jail crowding, said Wednesday he will begin immediately releasing about 1,200 pretrial inmates being held on bail of $2,500 or less.

Block, whose department runs the county’s jails, pledged to release more inmates if necessary by shortening sentences of those convicted of minor crimes. “I am not about to place myself or county government in a position where they can be cited for contempt,” he said.

Block chided state court judges for refusing to help decide which inmates should be released and for being unwilling to speed processing of inmates by conducting more court sessions at night and on Saturdays.

Night Sessions Resisted

Judges making up the leadership of the Los Angeles Superior Court have long resisted night sessions as inefficient. Leaders of Municipal and Superior courts recently declined to station a judge at Men’s Central Jail whose job would be to release inmates brought back there from court whenever a federal court-imposed population limit was reached.

“The (state) court flat out refused to participate in that process,” the sheriff told a news conference. “Some of them indicated that it was not a politically attractive process to be involved in. And my only comment is that it would be nice to be in an elected position where you were always able to do things that were politically appealing.”

On the desirability of night court, the sheriff said: “In private industry, if the workload goes up, you put on another shift. . . . We have a law enforcement force out there in the community that’s working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, bringing (increasing numbers of) people into the system. And then they’re being processed five days a week, perhaps six hours a day (in court), and we keep falling farther behind.”

Block made the remarks a day after U.S. District Judge William P. Gray gave him blanket authority to release any inmates he wishes in order to control jail crowding.

The county’s 10 jails have a rated capacity of 12,600, but early this week had an actual population of 23,571.

Gray has ordered that the population not exceed 22,319. Gray presided over a jail overcrowding lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department and the county that was won by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California in 1979, when county jail population was 8,000.

Block said that plans to release inmates with bails of $2,500 or less will also apply to inmates who arrive at jail in the future, if they are not wanted for other crimes and promise to come to court voluntarily to answer the charges against them.

Most Are Misdemeanants

The sheriff said he expected all of those released because of low bails to be accused misdemeanants, “but if a judge deems a felon not significant enough to impose a bail over $2,500, he would qualify.”

A review of the guide to bails used by Los Angeles County’s judges show that bails of less than $2,500 are recommended for a wide variety of felonies, including assault with a deadly weapon, pimping, commercial burglary, forgery, grand theft, receiving stolen property, computer fraud, embezzlement of public funds, some types of extortion, drunk driving resulting in injury and possession of less than 2,000 narcotic pills for sale.

Block said that if the low-bail releases do not bring the jails into compliance with the inmate limit, he is prepared to expand a program begun seven years ago to release convicted misdemeanants a few days before their sentences are set to expire.

For years, Block said, convicted misdemeanants have been released five days early. But since February, 8,500 of these inmates have gotten an additional one to three days off.

10,000 to 20,000 Involved

Early releases may involve 10,000 to 20,000 people in the next year, he said. “We book 237,000 people a year . . . so it’s difficult to give (precise) numbers.”

Block noted that 2,100 new maximum-security jail beds are expected to be ready next spring at the Peter Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic, and that 4,000 more jail beds are “currently on the boards.”

But he said he did not believe the additions would solve the overcrowding problem.

“There’s no way in the world that we could build enough facilities fast enough to ever be in compliance with the court order,” he said.