Working Off Their Crimes : Sentences: Instead of sitting in jail, at a cost to taxpayers estimated at $70 a day, offenders pay to labor outdoors for a variety of agencies.

Scores of people are paying Ventura County $12 apiece today for the chance to pull weeds, rake sewage sludge, clear ditches or pluck litter from roadsides.

They say it beats jail.

“Two hours in that holding cell was enough for me,” said John MacFarlane, 28, recalling his arrest on a reckless-driving charge that led to his conviction and a 20-day jail sentence.

Like most of the 300 or so minor offenders who enter the program each month, MacFarlane chose work release over jail. An X-ray technician, he gets to spend nights at home, do his time according to his own schedule, work outdoors and--as he put it--”do something constructive.”

The county and other public agencies, meanwhile, get cheap labor and save jail space for serious offenders.

“I personally believe that misdemeanants are the largest untapped resource in our society,” said Tom McCarthy, who supervises the program. Instead of sitting in jail, at a cost to taxpayers estimated at $70 a day, inmates work for agencies such as Ventura County, Caltrans, the city of Ventura, the state Department of Parks and Recreation and several school districts.

“It’s hard to gauge how much this saves taxpayers, because a lot of it is work that otherwise wouldn’t be done,” said Richard Humeston, division manager for the county’s Corrections Services Agency.

Ventura County government is the largest user of the program, with about 4,000 man-hours a month, or the equivalent of 24 full-time employees to clean drainage ditches, clear brush from hillsides and landscape county buildings, among other things. The California Department of Transportation is next with 3,000 man-hours, mostly devoted to picking up litter on weekends.

Before the program began two years ago, a lot of landscaping went undone, said Kathleen Van Norman, personnel officer for the county’s General Services Agency. “Little things like raking, we could do only when we had a moment,” she said. “Now we can schedule it regularly. I think the improvement is obvious.”

Officials stress that the intent is not to take away anybody’s job, and Van Norman said she hasn’t heard any complaints from fellow employees at the County Government Center. “In fact, they are all very anxious for this place to look good,” she said. “Now they can do more important things.”

The Conejo Valley Unified School District started using the program three months ago at a number of schools. Supt. William R. Seaver said that officials are very pleased and that some of the work will save the district a lot of money.

“We have a large ditch at Newbury Park High that they’re keeping debris out of,” Seaver said. “We had to spend $70,000 a few years ago to clean it out.”

Conejo Valley and other agencies that rely on the county to transport and supervise the inmates have to pay $18 per person per day. County government agencies and Caltrans, which provides vans and supervisors, pay nothing.

Ventura County judges have authorized greater and greater use of work release in the past two years, Humeston said, with about 300 people entering the program each month. Even so, he said, “public agencies are waiting in line to get this labor.” He said he expects more inmates to become available as the county struggles with jail overcrowding.

The county considers work release a break-even program. The $12 daily fee that inmates pay covers administrative costs. Occasionally, the fee is waived for someone who cannot afford the fee but who meets the program’s qualifications--basically, a sentence of less than 30 days for a nonviolent crime, McCarthy said.

Most participants have been sentenced to less than 10 days for offenses such as drunk driving, petty theft, probation violations or failure to appear on a traffic citation. About 80% are men.

“They’re very decent people who made a mistake,” said Joan Stokesbary, a corrections employee who was supervising workers at the Santa Clara Landfill near Oxnard one day this week.

That’s how Donna Manning described her theft of three cartons of cigarettes from a Vons store--a first offense that got her 12 days and a trip to the dump for weed-raking duty.

“It was the stupidest thing I have ever done in my life,” Manning said of her crime. “I don’t know what possessed me.”

Although Manning, who lives in Oxnard, would “rather be having coffee at home,” she said the work-release supervisors treat her well. At 58, Manning was the oldest of the people working at the landfill that day, and supervisors said they treated her accordingly.

“This is not like a chain gang busting up rocks,” supervisor Richard Berlin said.

Manning is doing her time one day a week. She and other participants said they like that flexibility.

“There’s no way I could go to jail,” said Tom Militello of Thousand Oaks, who was sentenced to 11 days for a probation violation. “I’d have lost my business.”

Instead, Militello, 27, does his time two days a week and takes care of his landscaping accounts on the other days. On Tuesday, he planned to go from raking the landfill to tending his customers’ yards.

The program operates seven days a week, with up to 50 people on weekdays and more than 100 on Saturdays and Sundays. Participants have no say in where they are assigned. They show up at the program’s office at the Camarillo Airport at 8 a.m., and after a review of the rules they head off to their work sites, 10 to a van plus a supervisor. Workers get two 15-minute breaks and half an hour for lunch, which they must bring from home.

Officials said they emphasize safety by issuing written rules and reminding workers of them each morning. Until recently, nobody in the county program had been seriously injured. On Sunday, however, Amadita Ramirez of Santa Paula was hit by an out-of-control van while picking up litter along a Ventura Freeway on-ramp. She had a punctured lung and other injuries.

Unlike offenders who are ordered to do community service--which can be fulfilled a number of ways, without manual labor--participants in work release have been sentenced to jail. They simply have the option of working instead.

Sometimes people don’t feel like working. “I had a guy who told me it was too hot to work,” McCarthy recalled. “I ‘cuffed him and took him to jail.”

But officials said most participants have good attitudes.

“You have to get rid of the anger before you come here,” said MacFarlane, the X-ray technician convicted of reckless driving.

“I had three speeding tickets before that,” he said, as he broke up dirt clods with a dusty rake. “I thought I was above the law.”