ACLU Wants to Widen Suit on Conditions at County Jail

The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday sought to expand a 13-year-old lawsuit over Orange County Jail, claiming that improvements won at the main men’s jail have not resulted in similar changes at other county jail facilities.

The ACLU alleged that unprovoked beatings take place in the county correctional system, that medical care is often substandard, that the staffs are inadequate and poorly trained and that wider rights for male inmates in the main jail in Santa Ana have not been matched for women, including visits by their children.

But the request--which was opposed by attorneys for the county, who maintained that such improvements have been made throughout the system--got a cool reception from the presiding judge in the case.

“I am immensely troubled by this,” U.S. District Judge William P. Gray told three ACLU attorneys at a hearing on the motion Monday. “I am most reluctant to take over the supervision of the whole Orange County jail system.”

The request seeks to bring all satellite jail facilities operated by the county into the existing lawsuit. At one point in that suit, Gray held the county Board of Supervisors and the sheriff-coroner in contempt of court for failure to reduce jail overcrowding and improve conditions.

Richard P. Herman, arguing for the larger scope for the lawsuit, alleged that “horrendous violations” of Gray’s earlier order establishing minimum standards at the men’s jail have occurred at the neighboring women’s facility, which holds about 150 inmates in downtown Santa Ana.

“But I haven’t made any orders concerning the women’s jail,” Gray interrupted.

Herman contended that the special master appointed by Gray to monitor jail conditions has regularly reported on other facilities.

“These improvements (at other facilities) won’t be made if we’re not there to see them made,” he said. “The county won’t spend money it doesn’t have to.”

But Gray responded, “I’m not willing to assume (that) the county sheriff (Brad Gates) and the Board of Supervisors are not willing to make reasonable improvements.”

The ACLU sought to expand the case to include the women’s jail next to the main men’s jail, the Theo Lacey branch facility in Orange, the new intake and release center for processing detainees into the adjacent main jail, and the James A. Musick Honor Farm in El Toro.

In the existing lawsuit, Gray found that the main men’s jail was overcrowded, set a maximum population and ordered other improvements.

Deputy County Counsel Edward N. Duran said studies by Lawrence Grossman, the special master appointed by Gray to oversee jail conditions, have shown the ACLU’s latest round of complaints to be groundless.

Duran further said that Sheriff Gates has consistently applied all orders directed at the main jail to all correctional facilities.

“At all times the sheriff has operated all the facilities as though there was a court order affecting all the facilities, even though there wasn’t,” Duran said.

Meir J. Westreich and ACLU attorney Rebecca Jurado, who appeared with Herman, said the main jail has improved but argued that the benefits have not been universally felt by inmates in other facilities.

Jurado alleged that while inmates in the main men’s jail now have a right to visits from minor children, mothers being held next door do not, and that women are not allowed to qualify for less than maximum security custody on the same basis as men. The vast majority of women are housed in maximum security custody but not for security reasons, according to the ACLU’s court papers.

In addition, women inmates are placed in leg irons, waist chain and handcuffs when taken to a rooftop recreation area, Jurado said, and some women also have been handcuffed in this fashion during visits.

But Duran said that jail monitoring reports earlier this year disclosed the unequal treatment of women and that the problem has since been corrected.

Other systemwide practices alleged are inadequate medical care, denial of access to lawyers and “a pattern and practice of unprovoked and excessive force,” in which guards “create, encourage or permit conditions which they know will result in inmate-to-inmate violence,” according to the lawsuit.

Often, the ACLU alleged, the reason is related to staff levels: There is a pattern of inadequate training of personnel, overcrowding, inadequate staffing and assignment to staff members of responsibilities for which they are too poorly trained, too inexperienced and too professionally immature to carry out.

The brutality allegations--which are new in this lawsuit--have already been studied by Grossman for both Gray and the Board of Supervisors, Duran said.

Grossman studied 1,000 allegations of brutality and concluded that none is accurate but that 17 involved actions that could have been seen as brutality, so he said that “inmate perceptions” are a major problem.

Duran said the new claims are similar to those made in a separate lawsuit filed by Herman, in which he is seeking $700,000 in damages on behalf of five inmates who claim to have been brutalized. No damages were sought in the main jail lawsuit, only orders aimed at improving conditions.

Gray took the ACLU request under submission.

Duran said it was the ACLU’s fifth attempt to add to the existing lawsuit in the last two years. He said he plans to seek $50,000 in fees from the ACLU for the cost to the county of answering the claims.