Countywide : Ballot Statements on Jail Initiative Filed

Supporters and opponents of the Centralized Jail Initiative, which would restrict the county from building any new jails outside Santa Ana, submitted written statements Tuesday for the June ballot.

Residents of Anaheim Hills and Yorba Linda, a few miles from the Gypsum Canyon site that the Board of Supervisors chose for a new jail, were the driving force behind the effort to qualify the measure for the ballot in 1988, when they submitted about 130,000 petition signatures.

In their ballot statement, the measure’s proponents said it is “the only sensible plan to keep criminals off Orange County streets,” and that new jails should be built “where they will have a minimal impact on our lives.”

The measure, supporters said, would ensure that new jails are built either near the county courthouse in Santa Ana or outside Orange County, at a remote, desert site.

Opponents, however, said the measure would block the county’s effort to build a remote jail in Riverside County and would force the county to condemn homes in order to make room for a new jail in Santa Ana.

“Taxpayers! Just say no to the Centralized Jail Initiative,” the opponents’ statement begins. “Would you want a jail, home to child molesters and other criminals, just 600 feet from your children’s school?”

The measure says that no jail shall be constructed within 600 feet of any school.

In a written memo to the Board of Supervisors, County Counsel Adrian Kuyper, who already has said that he thinks the measure would be overturned in court if it should pass, said he believes the initiative would prevent the county from building a remote jail in Riverside County.

He also said, however, that the proposed law might not prevent an entity separate from the county, such as a joint powers authority or an inter-county authority, from building such a jail.