It’s a Dirty Job, but . . . : Corrections: Petty offenders choose sewage treatment and public service work over jail. The county wants to expand the program.

Imagine being told you could avoid a day in Ventura County Jail by paying $17 and agreeing to work in a huge sewage pit in Santa Paula for eight hours.

Or you could pay to sift through other people’s garbage at the Bailard Landfill in Oxnard looking for recyclable material.

These are some of the more unsavory tasks assigned to about 500 misdemeanor offenders each week in the Ventura County work-release program, the state’s second-largest such program.

Although some assignments make changing the kitty litter sound pleasant, the program has gained so much popularity among offenders that county officials want to nearly double the staff so they can get more inmates into the program.

The Board of Supervisors will consider today whether to pay $184,200 to hire six additional correction services officers to join the seven full-time workers who operate the work-release program.

Cities, schools and county agencies are also high on the program because it provides them cheap labor for jobs that almost no one wants to do. Last year, the county itself used about 4,000 man-hours a month, or the equivalent of 24 full-time employees.

Corrections Services Agency Director William Forden said the program is so popular among public agencies that his department must reject at least five requests for work-release crews each day.

The additional staff that the agency is requesting would be used to transport and supervise at least five additional work crews, he said.

About 99% of the program’s costs are paid through the $17 fee charged to the offenders and the $200-a-day fee charged to public agencies that hire a 10-person crew. The labor is free for a public agency if it can provide transportation and supervision for the crew.

The crews put in an average of about 15,000 hours each month, doing such backbreaking work as digging ditches at beaches, clearing brush on mountain trails, pulling weeds on the side of roads, and landscaping areas around city and county buildings.

“Most of the work is for a bona fide public need,” Forden said. “But again, these people aren’t used to take the place of any employee.”

Although some of the chores leave offenders smelling like a chicken coop at the end of the day, they say it beats jail and it allows them to go home at night.

About 75% of the misdemeanor offenders who are given the choice between jail and the work-release program take the work.

“Being locked up inside is not for me,” said Lenny Ramirez, 23, who spent eight hours Monday in the huge sewage pit at the Santa Paula Waste Water Treatment Facility. He was completing the sixth day of an 11-day sentence for drunk driving.

Ramirez was part of an eight-man, two-woman crew that spread black, flower-shaped plastic receptacles in the pit while sewage water was sprayed into the pit. A special bacteria released into the pit grows on the plastic receptacles and eats away at the solids in the sewage.

Ramirez said he cannot complain about the odorous task. Compared to his previous work assignment--pulling recyclable material out of the garbage at the Bailard Landfill--he said working in a sewage pit is a breeze.

The Corrections Services Agency has yet to refuse a job for being too vile, said Patrick Boggs, a supervising correction service officer.

“We haven’t even begun to tap the resources of the work-release program,” he said as he watched Ramirez at the sewage pit.

Most participants have been sentenced to less than 10 days for offenses such as drunk driving, probation violations or petty theft, he said. About 80% are men.

However, women offenders do not get special treatment.

Celeste Herbold, 20, has worked three days of a six-day sentence for assaulting a police officer.

Last week she spent one day separating recyclables at the Bailard Landfill and another day shoveling sewage from a treatment plant in Piru.

On Monday, she worked alongside Ramirez at the sewage pit in Santa Paula.

“This is the best job so far,” she said.