Supervisors OK Plan to Double County Jail Capacity Over 20 Years

A multibillion-dollar plan that calls for nearly doubling Los Angeles County’s jail capacity to 43,230 beds over the next 20 years was approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors.

The plan was opposed by Asian and Latino residents who objected that it does nothing to relieve an overconcentration of detention facilities in their downtown and East Los Angeles neighborhoods.

The 395-page document proposes 12 new jails at unspecified sites throughout the county, but it is simply a “planning document,” required by the state, supervisors pointed out. Any new jails beyond those already approved, they said, face considerable financial and political obstacles.

Supervisors had to approve the plan to qualify for $161 million in state bond funds to increase the capacity of the downtown Men’s Central Jail to 9,000 from its present 6,800 inmates. The bonds would also be used to build a 1,000-bed jail in Lynwood.

The plan brought out opponents of the Central Jail expansion for another try to kill the project, approved by the supervisors in August. The city of Los Angeles also has filed suit to block the expansion.

Sharon Lowe, representing the Latino and Asian Coalition to Improve Our Neighborhoods (L.A. Action) told supervisors that the neighborhoods from Chinatown to East Los Angeles are already overloaded with existing and proposed jail facilities.

Undersheriff Robert Edmonds, referring to city opposition to the jail expansion, responded, “We’re still waiting for the city of Los Angeles to offer us a suitable site somewhere else in the city, because they are our biggest customer.”

Edmonds added, “We don’t disagree with the need for more decentralization . . . but we need to proceed with expansion of the Central Jail to relieve problems facing us there.”

Some 250,000 minor offenders have been released early from the 11 county detention facilities since June, 1988, because of a court order limiting the jail capacity countywide to 22,000 prisoners, Edmonds told supervisors.

In addition, prisoners at the Central Jail have been forced to sleep in hallways and in the jail chapel.

The Central Jail expansion calls for building a two-story “inmate reception center” flanked by two concrete towers--seven and eight stories--on what is now a parking lot across from the existing jail on Bauchet Street. A five-story tower at the rear of the complex will house a jail hospital.

The plan approved Tuesday projects a need for 43,932 jail beds countywide by the year 2010, costing more than $3.5 billion.

The county now houses 22,000 prisoners at jails licensed for about 15,592.

“The jail plan provides a decentralized approach to siting future detention facilities based on projected county population distribution and projected arrests by region,” says the report, prepared by private consultants at a cost of $274,000,

The plan was approved by the board on a 3-1 vote, with Supervisor Ed Edelman, in whose district the Central Jail is located, dissenting. Supervisor Pete Schabarum was absent.

County Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon has recommended that supervisors place a half-cent sales-tax increase in Los Angeles County on the November ballot to raise $400 million a year for jail operations. No decision has been made on that request.