COUNTYWIDE : Jails Complaint Is Amended by ACLU

Civil rights advocates seeking a federal judge’s ruling to improve living conditions in Orange County jails have amended some of the complaints in their longstanding battle with the county.

The amended complaint, filed Thursday in federal court in Santa Ana on behalf of the inmates, expands on alleged psychological abuses at both the men’s and women’s main jails and the intake and release center that were detailed in a complaint filed last April.

April’s complaint marked the first time that lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union included the women’s facility in its lawsuit.

The ACLU, which has been fighting for improved jail conditions in the county since 1975, also charges in the amended suit that the Sheriff’s Department, which operates the jails, failed to provide “a decent, clean jail, a safe jail.”

The complaint alleges that prisoners are placed in overcrowded cells, are physically and mentally mistreated and denied access to reading material.

Orange County Assistant Sheriff Rocky Hewitt declined to comment on the lawsuit but said in a release that the “jail complex is one of the cleanest, best-run facilities of its type in the country.” He invited “the courts, the grand jury, any justice commission, Orange County and state health care agencies and the Board of Corrections . . . to visit and inspect the jails anytime, unannounced.”

Deputy County Counsel Stefen Weiss, who represents the county against the ACLU lawsuit, could not be reached for comment.