Local Police Want Criminals to Pay the Price : Crime: Law enforcement officials ask judges to require that convicted offenders cover most of the $1 million a year in booking fees soon to be charged to cities.

Area police agencies, struggling to absorb a $120 fee each time they book a prisoner at the Ventura County Jail, asked Monday that the burden be transferred to those convicted of crimes.

In a letter to presiding judges of the county courts, five police departments and the sheriff’s department asked that criminals be forced to pay most of the $1 million a year in booking fees that otherwise will be charged to cities beginning in January. The fees are retroactive to July 1.

“A very appealing alternative is to levy this fee against the people who have caused it, namely the offender,” wrote Oxnard Police Chief Robert P. Owens in a letter from the police agencies to court officials.

Edwin M. Osborne and Lee E. Cooper Jr., presiding judges of the superior and municipal courts, said they could not comment because they had neither reviewed the letter nor researched the legality of court-imposed booking fees for convicts.

State law allows judges to fine inmates for the cost of their incarceration in local jails if they are convicted and can afford to pay the penalties. It is under this law that the police chiefs think the booking fees can be implemented, Owens said.

“It is our window of opportunity,” the Oxnard chief said. He was referring to his agency and those in Ventura, Simi Valley, Santa Paula and Port Hueneme, as well as the sheriff’s department, which provides law enforcement services in the county’s other five cities.

A spokesman for the state’s largest association of criminal defense attorneys quickly condemned the proposal, saying it is illegal and far beyond the intent of the Legislature when it approved incarceration charges.

Yet, Philip Schnayerson, a spokesman for the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, predicted that Ventura County’s judges will embrace it.

“I have not heard that Ventura County is the bastion of liberalism,” he said. “I’m told it’s not the Athens of the West. And I don’t think those judges are going to be sympathetic to the absurdity of this proposal. . . .”

Despite angry objections by the cities, booking fees were approved by the county Board of Supervisors in September to partially offset a $6-million cut in state funds to the county this fiscal year.

Courts statewide already collect a variety of fees from criminals who are not destitute--everything from levies for drug and alcohol lab tests to fees for public defender and probation services. The law also allows cities to recover from drunk drivers the cost of sending emergency equipment to the scene of an accident in which the drivers were involved.

Although a decision on booking fees lies solely with judges, the courts’ executive officer, Sheila Gonzalez, said booking fees can be collected efficiently here because Ventura County has a collections department, which is unique in the state.

That 14-person department collected $4 million in overdue fees charged by judges in criminal cases last year at a cost of $500,000, she said. The office collected 60% of all the overdue fees, she said.

“If the judges determine it is appropriate, it is very feasible that it would be successful,” Gonzalez said.

If judges agree to levy booking fees against criminals, Owens said he will also ask them to impose fines to pay his department for detention costs whether they lead to bookings into the County Jail or not, as long as they end in conviction.

That would mean, Owens said, that people who are arrested in Oxnard would have to pay the wages of officers who supervise them at the city police station.

“It depends on the courts’ interpretation of what is incarceration,” Owens said. Theoretically, “anybody brought in here could be assessed a fee whether we transport them or not. That’s kind of an interesting angle to pursue.”

As things stand, Oxnard faces a bill of at least $500,000 for bookings in 1990-91 even though the Police Department has greatly expanded its program of giving misdemeanor criminals citations and then releasing them, Owens said

Sheriff’s Cmdr. Robert Brooks, supervisor of the jail, said bookings are down 15% countywide from December of last year, presumably because of the new booking fees.