ACLU Says Jail Violates Court Order

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has devised a bookkeeping scheme to hide violations of a judge’s longstanding order to give jail inmates a bunk within 24 hours of incarceration, civil rights advocates alleged Thursday in federal court.

American Civil Liberties Union lawyers contended at a meeting in Los Angeles with U.S. District Judge William P. Gray and high-ranking sheriff’s deputies that the Orange County Jail was “keeping a double set of books,” one internal and one official, on bunk assignments.

The internal records show inmates as having been assigned bunks when, in fact, they were being housed in holding cells without bunks, ACLU lawyers said.

Sheriff’s deputies denied during the meeting that they have conspired to violate any court orders and defended their record-keeping as a way to track prisoners placed in other parts of the jail, going through booking or sent to court.

Gray ruled in 1978 that the Sheriff’s Department must relieve overcrowding and improve living conditions for prisoners at the central men’s jail in Santa Ana. A key provision to reduce crowding was an order to provide bunks to prisoners within 24 hours of their booking.

Over the last decade, Gray has refined his rulings, monitored the sheriff’s compliance with his orders and has held formal and informal hearings to resolve complaints about jail conditions.

During an informal session Thursday morning, Gray met with ACLU lawyers Richard P. Herman and Rebecca Jurado; two deputy county counsels, Stefen H. Weiss and Thomas C. Agin; Assistant Sheriff John (Rocky) Hewitt and a group of sheriff’s deputies.

After the meeting, Gray said he had no opinion on the allegations made by Herman and Jurado but allowed them to interview inmates and obtain jail records from the Sheriff’s Department.

Herman and Jurado charged that deputies were violating Gray’s order by using “ghost bodies”--a notation that jailers use on their internal inventories of prisoners at the men’s jail.

According to court documents filed by the ACLU, the official jail records show the “ghost” inmates already in bunks when they are actually still being housed in temporary cells without bedding past Gray’s 24-hour deadline.

One jail population report obtained by the ACLU showed that on June 1, 1989, five prisoners were designated as “ghost bodies” out of 1,366 prisoners. In addition, Herman said, he receives at least one complaint a month from prisoners saying they did not get a bunk on time.

Assistant Sheriff Hewitt said deputies were doing a “good job” getting inmates a bunk on time. He said jailers usually use the “ghost body” designation for people who have been assigned a bunk before they finish the booking process. It is also used for prisoners in court or in other jail facilities, he said.

“It just means the main jail doesn’t have the body yet, but a cell is waiting for that person,” Hewitt said. “The judge was satisfied with it. We are giving them a bunk. We are taking the order very seriously.”

But three jail deputies, who spoke on the condition their names not be used, said they have used “ghost body” notations on records to show that prisoners were assigned to bunks when they actually were in holding cells. Some of those inmates, they said, went without bunks for more than 24 hours.

The deputies also said they were instructed by their superiors several months ago to avoid using the “ghost body” notation on their inventories of prisoners.