Creative Solutions Might Help Ease Jailhouse Squeeze

Don Roth, that tortured soul of county government, looked pained. “I need guidance from the people,” he said.

And you thought it was supposed to be the other way around.

Despite Roth’s best efforts to tie himself to the railroad tracks, the train once again is on track to deliver a new jail to Gypsum Canyon. A three-vote majority committed the county Tuesday to begin negotiations with the Irvine Co. about acquiring the site for the new mega-jail. If those negotiations don’t go anywhere, the same majority instructed the county to consider some unspecified legal action.

If anyone has any incriminating photos of major Irvine Co. officials, now would be an excellent time to produce them.

But even failing that, things need not be as bleak as Roth suggests.

I base that on this perhaps silly premise: Sometimes, crisis brings out the best in people.

Roth exhorted speaker after speaker and media critics to explain where the money will come from. When county grand jury foreman Grant Baldwin answered, “If I knew that, I’d be in your seat,” Roth dismissed the answer, but there was more than a kernel of logic in it.

These are things beyond the province of the average layman. It’s why we depend on government. If we thought all was hopeless, we’d elect Chicken Little to the board.

What Baldwin should have added is that the board should never have gotten itself into this situation. Roth talked about running government like running a household, with both eyes on the family budget. An excellent idea, but did you ever hear of a prudent family that didn’t provide for long-term necessities?

But let’s not be naysayers. As Supervisor Harriett Wieder said to one speaker Tuesday: “It’s easy to be negative.”

Boy, is it.

So, now the fun part starts. What to do? How to turn this seemingly insurmountable obstacle of new jail construction into an opportunity?

The board could start by picking the brain of people such as Kevin Meehan, director of Orange County Youth and Family Services, a private, nonprofit social service agency based in Orange. Meehan talked briefly at the board meeting of efforts to house less serious offenders in community halfway houses.

Under a contract with Orange County, Meehan’s agency operates facilities in Buena Park and Anaheim that already house 110 county jail prisoners on work-furlough programs. Another 40 state prison inmates are housed in Garden Grove under a contract with the state. If, for example, each of the county’s 29 cities took 50 inmates, Meehan noted, that would represent an inmate population of nearly 1,500, a significant percentage of the county’s projected jail population.

Meehan is quite enthusiastic about such programs. I asked him after the meeting why he hadn’t discussed it in detail with the county. He acknowledged that his agency has tended to be low profile and could have done a better job over the years of “educating the board.” But Meehan is convinced such community programs work and could be greatly expanded in Orange County.

Whether Meehan should have been coming to the county over the years or vice versa is irrelevant. And maybe his belief that 1,000 to 2,000 inmates could be put in community programs is too high.

But it’s the kind of discussion that has to begin in earnest. For every program that works or can be expanded, the potential size and cost of the next new jail is reduced.

I asked Meehan if he were optimistic the supes would imaginatively tackle the jail problem.

“With necessity being mother of invention, I believe if they had the money we wouldn’t be having this discussion,” Meehan said. “They’d be building a jail right now. Given the fact that they don’t have the money, you have to be creative and innovative. There are no other choices. Even if they push ahead with the Gypsum Canyon project, it’s still years away. Something has to be done now. If a concerted effort is embarked on immediately, hundreds of beds can be created in the interim.”

Despite the objections of Roth and Gaddi Vasquez, the board majority of Stanton-Wieder-Riley was absolutely right in reviving Gypsum Canyon discussions.

And rather than despairing, it’s time for the board to get creative in solving the county’s corrections problem. There must be other Kevin Meehans out there.

The public guidance Roth beseeched involved the question of a sales tax to pay for the jail. That may come, but there is other work to do in the meantime that is less painful.

And please, Mr. Roth, attitude is important.

Remember, as Harriett Wieder said, it’s easy to be negative.