County Wins Time to Cut Jail Population : Court: Judge praises county’s effort to cut number of inmates at crowded jails but says it must come up with a plan for even more reductions.

A Superior Court judge Monday commended San Diego County for lowering the number of inmates jammed into the county’s outlying jails but said the county will soon have to bring the count at the downtown jail lower still.

El Cajon Superior Court Judge James Malkus, however, denied an ACLU request to order the county to immediately reduce the inmate total at the aging downtown jail, which another judge ruled 10 years ago was so crowded that living there was cruel and unusual punishment. Immediate cuts, Malkus said, are unworkable.

Instead, the judge, charged with monitoring the population at the county’s jails under two lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, including the one that resulted in the 1980 ruling, permitted jail officials to abide temporarily by a more generous inmate limit. But he also directed jail officials to report back Aug. 20 with a plan to cut the downtown inmate population--somehow.

Malkus’s ruling was the most recent order issued by a line of judges presiding over the two major court cases, each filed to protest crowding at the jails. The county had been ordered to meet court-imposed population caps at the jails by Sunday, which it told Malkus Monday it had done at outlying facilities but not at the downtown jail.

The county’s lawyer at Monday’s hearing indicated that it would be hard-pressed to come up with a new plan by the Aug. 20 hearing. The county, which depends largely on state funding, has not received enough cash to build new jails and has so little money that it is not even ready to staff a new jail now being built, said deputy county counsel Nathan C. Northup.

“It’s a real bang your head against the wall kind of case,” Northup said. “It’s been that way from the start.”

It was evident, however, that Malkus’ decision relieved county officials, who have been fighting the ACLU in court for 13 years over conditions at the county jails. “I think we dodged another bullet,” said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Mel Nichols, who directs the jails’ daily operations.

ACLU lawyers said they were pleased that the county had lowered totals at the outlying jails but disappointed that the situation at the downtown jail was left unresolved. “I quote Nelson Mandela: ‘Keep the pressure on,’ ” said ACLU attorney Betty Wheeler, referring to the black nationalist leader from South Africa.

According to recent surveys, the San Diego County jails consistently have ranked among the nation’s most crowded. According to the ACLU’s suits, the crowded conditions lead to violence and inhumane conditions at the jails.

The first suit was filed in 1977. After a lengthy trial, San Diego Superior Court Judge James Focht ruled in 1980 that any count above 750 inmates at the downtown jail violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

The second suit was filed in 1987, again alleging crowding, this time at the five jails that the county had since built. Those jails include men’s facilities in Vista, Descanso, Chula Vista and El Cajon, as well as a women’s jail in Santee.

Since the second suit was filed, the county has built another temporary men’s jail in Santee. It is building another jail on East Mesa but has not allocated money to staff it upon its scheduled completion next spring. The ACLU suits do not include either of those facilities.

The second suit came to an end in December, 1988, when San Diego Superior Court Judge Barbara T. Gamer approved a settlement calling for the county to meet certain caps by July 1, 1990. The settlement established caps of 937 inmates at the Vista jail, 440 at Descanso, 373 at Chula Vista, 251 at El Cajon and 478 at the women’s jail in Santee.

Meanwhile, the ACLU agreed in May, 1988, to a temporary cap of 1,250 at the downtown jail while the facility in Vista was being emptied for renovation. At a hearing last month, with Vista again fully operational, Malkus ordered the downtown cap lowered to 1,000.

Though the county was a total of 230 inmates over the caps at last month’s hearing, on June 11, Northup reported Monday that each of the outlying jails had complied with the limits by last Sunday’s deadline.

The county met the goals, Northup said, through a variety of methods, including the deportation last week of 63 illegal aliens convicted of crimes, the transfer of 30 inmates to probation department camps and the addition of bunks at the Vista and Descanso jails for the transfer of inmates from downtown.

It also made use of a system that Malkus approved at last month’s hearing that allows jail officials to exclude from the count inmates in medical beds and those awaiting release. Those categories amounted Monday to 113 inmates, jail officials said.

“I am satisfied at this point that everything that had to be done has been done to bring the county into compliance,” Malkus said. “I commend the county.”

ACLU attorneys, however, said they are bothered that the county met the caps only under the threat of fines or contempt-of-court citations, which Malkus issued this year. For instance, not counting inmates who, regardless of the circumstances, are in custody is a misleading “shell game,” lawyer Alex Landon said.

ACLU lawyer Wheeler said she was especially distressed at Malkus’ refusal to order an immediate return from the current inmate cap of 1,000 at the downtown jail to 750. The downtown jail held 1,008 inmates Monday, only 836 of whom had to be officially counted, according to jail officials.

Because conditions at the downtown jail remain cruel and unusual, “in essence the Constitution has been suspended for those people, with the approval of the court, and I find it very disappointing,” Wheeler said.

Malkus said he could not order immediate cuts at the downtown jail because that would “be unmanageable and would create a public safety concern.”

But he added that he also was “not about to undo” the lengthy 1980 trial at which the cap of 750 was set. He ordered Northup to prepare for the Aug. 21 hearing “concrete proposals” detailing methods and a timetable for achieving cuts to 750 inmates.

“The longer the county delays, the more exacerbated the situation becomes,” Malkus said.