Court Restricts Orange County Jailers’ Use of ‘Rubber Rooms’

In a major defeat for Orange County that could signal changes in jails around the state, a federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Sheriff’s Department to provide beds, clothing and toilet facilities for inmates confined to the jail’s “rubber rooms.”

U.S. District Judge William P. Gray lashed out at the county’s practice of putting inmates who are considered potentially dangerous or suicidal into tiny cells--empty except for a hole in the floor for excrement--and denying them bedding, clothes and wash basins.

“All of those things are far below the standards of human decency to which any individual is entitled,” Gray said.

Declaring that the practice threatens to rob inmates of their “human dignity,” the judge ordered the changes even before he heard scheduled testimony Wednesday from an inmate who had been put in a so-called rubber room.

Jubilant attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the suit in Santa Ana, said the decision is the first in the state to successfully challenge the isolation cells and could spark similar reforms in dozens of other county jails that use the rooms to control troublesome inmates.

“This means the end of rubber rooms,” said Dick Herman, a volunteer attorney for the ACLU who has been pushing jail reform in the courts of Orange and surrounding counties for the last decade. “This is as big a win as we’ve ever had.”

At least half of the 55 to 60 county jail facilities in the state use similar isolation cells, said Jack W. Pederson, deputy director of the state Board of Corrections jail division. Gray’s ruling, he said, “could certainly lead us to take another look” at the practice.

While withholding judgment until he could read the ruling, Pederson said, “These safety cells are designed to protect the inmates, and the idea of putting a bed in there--and maybe a toilet--presents the possibility of them hurting themselves. That could be a problem.”

But Herman maintained that the judge’s order validates his argument that the isolation cells are not designed to protect inmates from themselves, but are “a real convenient way for a guard to get rid of an unruly inmate.”

Under Gray’s order, no inmate will be placed in the isolation cells without the written order of a qualified examining psychiatrist or other medical professional.

And anyone who is deemed potentially violent or self-destructive and is placed in the cells will be provided a bed, clothing and access to a sit-down toilet and wash facilities.

All or most of these items are now denied to the several dozen inmates who pass through Orange County’s rubber rooms every month, each staying anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Gray allowed jail officials to deny inmates in the cells any of these items with good cause, but the burden now will be on the county to show how the items could prove dangerous.

Lawrence G. Grossman, formerly a court-appointed inspector of the jail and currently a private consultant to the county, said after the ruling: “Certainly this is a change, but it’s an acceptable change.”

He disputed the ACLU’s assertion that the ruling forebodes the end of rubber rooms, saying: “This still gives the jail staff the flexibility to withhold (beds, toilets and other items) if an inmate’s suicidal and is going to hurt himself.”

The judge made his ruling after meeting with attorneys in his chambers for more than an hour. Because both sides agreed to the terms, Herman said, the county cannot appeal.

“This order will not be appealed. We agreed to it.”

Deputy County Counsel Stefen H. Weiss, who defended the county in the ACLU suit, refused to comment after the ruling.

But in a recent letter to The Times, Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates defended the use of isolation cells. “We wish there were no necessity for them,” he said, “but the reality in a jail setting is they are the best alternative in dealing with unfortunates who are temporarily suffering from some mental impairment in which they are destructive to themselves and others.”