O.C. Jail Packs ‘Em In, but Each Case Is Unique

One after another, 26 prisoners--from nervous young thieves to surly, tattooed toughs--stepped before Deputy Sheriff Joel Monroe on Friday night as he hurried to decide how best to keep them safe and alive.

“Have you ever been arrested before? . . . Do you have any gang affiliations? . . . Have you ever attempted suicide? . . . Are you a homosexual?”

From a few feet away, it’s impossible for an observer to hear the answers that the inmates mumble through the thick glass, but those responses will weigh heavily on their time in jail. Based on that information and the way they behave, inmates will get a wristband--white for minimum-security prisoners; yellow, orange, red or blue for the more hardened or at-risk ones.

Lock up an 18-year-old thief next to a murderer, or leave members of rival gangs in the same cell, and it’s not long before, as one sheriff’s official put it: “We’ll have blood and pieces.”

Because of an ever-booming number of arrests and overcrowding in the Orange County jail system--a problem that has gone from bad to critical in recent years--Monroe has to pick the right wristband dozens of times every night and juggle inmates throughout the system to keep it from choking. It’s a high-stakes human shell game in which a mistake can put an inmate’s life in serious danger.

And yet, despite their quick and careful work, the efforts of Monroe and his colleagues can barely keep pace with the flow of humanity that builds nightly inside the 4,400-inmate county jail system--a stark and frightening world unto itself rarely glimpsed by law-abiding people.

As the hour slipped past midnight Friday into Saturday morning, dozens of male inmates who had arrived the previous afternoon were still slumped in their holding cells, squirming on the 18.5 inches of cement bench space allocated to each prisoner while he waits for a bed to open up. Beneath bright overhead lights, they lolled on the benches--some in street clothes, others in jail overalls--heads drooped wearily in open hands. Some slept while others paced, eyeing the deputies who eyed them back through thick glass.

And that’s on a slow night.

A busy Friday evening shift, which runs from 3 to 11 p.m., typically brings more than 130 bookings through the Intake-Release Center, an antiseptic-smelling, surprisingly quiet entryway into the county jail system. When they come in that quickly, the backup often runs to more than 18 hours.

During the night shift Friday, only 91 prisoners entered the facility--from the frightened, uniformed postal worker dragged in on a drunk-driving arrest to the black-clad gang members who grin cockily throughout the process. And even though the incoming inmates sometimes backed up six or eight deep as they waited to be searched, jailers commented all evening long about how slow business was.

Under a 1978 federal court order, the Sheriff’s Department is required to find a bed for every prisoner within 24 hours of arrival. That same order caps the number of inmates allowed on two floors of the Santa Ana Men’s Jail, but does not limit the number who can be held at four other county facilities.

As a result, the other facilities are routinely overcrowded, exceeding their rated capacity by hundreds of inmates and making the struggle for bed space a constant feature of life inside the jail system. To address that problem, lawyers for county inmates last week filed a motion in U.S. District Court that would amend the 1978 order by extending the population caps to every county jail.

The exact effect of such a cap is disputed by American Civil Liberties Union lawyers, who represent the inmates, and Sheriff’s Department officials. Both parties agree that it would dramatically reshape the county jail system.

Already bursting at the seams, the population in the housing units would be even more restricted. That would test the deputies even further. But it also would mean far less crowded housing units and it would force the system to move inmates through more quickly.

As it is, overcrowding can make that process an agonizingly slow one.

Even on a “slow” evening such as Friday, the prisoners trickle into the county system constantly, some arriving from area police departments or California Highway Patrol units. Others are escorted in by sheriff’s deputies on patrol. They come so fast that deputies simply refer to them as “bodies.”

As they arrive through the facility’s heavy metal and glass double doors, a shadow falls across many of the prisoners’ eyes. The door slams behind them, and many realize for the first time that they now are in jail.

All are handcuffed, most are scared, some are defiant, more than half are drunk or under the influence of drugs. One young woman brought in by sheriff’s deputies early Friday evening arrived barefoot, dressed in tight-fitting spandex, her face badly bruised.

The woman sat on the cement bench awaiting her pre-booking talk with one of the jail’s nurses. As she did, she hunched over, burying her face in her lap to keep those around her from seeing her face.

For women, the booking process is relatively quick, and most are in a cell bed within a few hours. They are questioned about possible medical problems, which can run the gamut. Some poor women who are pregnant actually try to get arrested in their eighth month, deputies said, so that they can get a doctor to examine them.

Once through so-called “medical triage,” the women’s pockets are emptied and they are patted down for hidden weapons and drugs by a deputy wearing white latex gloves to protect against AIDS. Their handcuffs are removed and they are told to take off their shoes and socks, which are also searched. Next, they are interviewed by a “classification deputy” like Monroe, who assigns them a color-coded wristband. They are then taken either to the main women’s jail in Santa Ana, part of the same complex where they are booked, or to one of the branch facilities.

In the overcrowded men’s system, the process is identical but much more time-consuming. After medical triage, it took just a few minutes to uncuff, search, photograph and question many of the male inmates brought in Friday, but that only marked the beginning of their wait. By midnight, 101 men cooled their heels in the first-floor holding cells.

The earliest to arrive had been escorted into the jail at 12:24 p.m. Friday. At 12:05 a.m. on Saturday, he remained in a holding cell, still without a bed.

At the other end of a long hall known as “the booking loop,” new prisoners continued to arrive.

Just before midnight, a uniformed Brea police officer accompanied a newly arrested suspect to the search area and joked as he handed paperwork to Deputy Roger Guevara, who was seated behind a window.

“We’d like a suite, please,” the officer quipped.

Even from the outside, the discomfort in those glassed-in rooms is obvious. Because the holding cells are closely supervised, men inside them are not separated by their crimes, so serious felons and petty misdemeanants sit side by side.

One neatly dressed man in a wool sweater backed himself into a corner of holding cell H6. Arrested on suspicion of drunk driving--a “deuce,” in police parlance--the man was merely in jail long enough to be issued a citation and sober up in a medical observation room. But joining him in the seven-man cell were a pair of young men whose bulging arms were covered in tattoos extending from above their shirt sleeves to their wrists.

They sneered at the deputies across the way. The well-dressed man watched nervously.

“Some people get pretty shaken up about being here,” said Capt. William Miller, who oversees the Intake-Release Center. “They get to meet a whole new bunch of people.”

Once past the booking area, inmates are taken to housing units, where they are separated according to their wristbands. In the Intake-Release Center’s Mod N, 192 maximum-security inmates on Friday night exchanged dirty prison clothes for clean ones. In his electronically sophisticated control booth, Deputy A. Barrera prowled back and forth, watching and summoning prisoners for church services.

The cells, though clean, are crowded. Each one has two bunks. The jail is rated by the state for a capacity of 384 inmates, but it actually holds 835.

With that many inmates already inside and more always arriving, the scramble for beds never stops.

To make room in the jails for serious criminals, the Sheriff’s Department has practiced a policy known as “cite and release” since 1986. Under that system, deputies release misdemeanor offenders with just a citation and instructions to appear in court on a certain day.

It’s not a system that pleases many of those who are part of it. Judges complain that it undercuts the administration of justice, some county officials worry about the possible threat to public safety--though most of those inmates released are accused of relatively minor crimes. And sheriff’s deputies, who are in the business of arresting criminals and getting them off the streets, don’t like turning around and letting them go.

Of the 91 people booked into the county jail system on the Friday night shift, 13 were cited and released. Most were gone within a few hours.

“We’ve released people that we haven’t wanted to release,” Miller said. “But we just keep our fingers crossed that we don’t release a violent person or a child molester or something.”

What it gets the department in return is bed space, which the deputies need to accommodate the next wave of prisoners hammering on the Intake-Release Center’s “back door.” For no sooner has one prisoner checked out of the system than another is waiting to fill his place.

It’s a constant and disheartening cycle, one that shows no signs of abating.

“If you’re a carpenter and you build a house, you stand back and see the house,” Miller said. “The guys here, all they see is the 150 they booked on their shift. And tomorrow night it’ll be another 150.”