COMMENTARY ON MEASURE J : The Jail Initiative: Urgently Needed or a Costly Boondoggle? : For: To police officers who have to patrol the streets every day, another 10 years of delay is totally unacceptable.

“There’s not enough room. They’ll let me out.” That’s what a gang member with a long history of violent crime told me last week when I took him to jail.

More and more often, police officers hear criminals we arrest tell us they aren’t afraid to break the law.

Gang members and other criminals know that even if they commit a serious crime, the police will have to let them back on the streets because there is no place to hold them in the Orange County Jail.

The same problem exists in Juvenile Halls, where 65% of arrested gang members are sent.

We recently arrested a juvenile gang member who had an assault rifle. There was no room in Juvenile Hall, so he was released back to his home with a mere curfew.

He still poses a threat to the safety of the community.

Jail and Juvenile Hall overcrowding frequently hinder our gang investigations. Many gang members released on a promise to appear in court immediately begin intimidating victims and witnesses who could testify against them.

The result is that fewer gang members are convicted and removed from the streets.

It’s sad but true. Each week, more than 850 criminals are released back into Orange County communities immediately after arrest or before the end of their sentences because there is no room in the jail.

These releases occur because the ACLU convinced a federal court judge to limit the number of prisoners allowed in the housing area of the Central Men’s Jail and to require that each prisoner receive a bed within 24 hours or be released.

Police records show that many criminals are arrested again almost immediately after they go free.

According to a recent Orange County Sheriff’s Department study, more than 5,400 criminals since 1987 have been arrested committing crimes when they should have been in jail.

Because criminologists have found that the average criminal commits 10 to 20 crimes before he is arrested, we can safely estimate that between 54,000 and 108,000 crimes could have been prevented during this period by having a new jail.

Criminology studies confirm what Orange County police officers know firsthand: The best way to reduce crime is to remove criminals from the streets.

Stephen Klein and Michael Caggiano found in a Bureau of Justice statistics study that more than 50% of the released prisoners they tracked over a 36-month period were arrested again for new crimes: “Almost all of those were convicted and incarcerated--often for serious crimes (such as murder, rape, kidnaping, assault, robbery and burglary),” the study found.

Joan Petersilia and Susan Turner found in a National Institute of Justice study that “public safety would clearly benefit from somehow incapacitating a larger proportion of the felony offenders represented in this study, and for a longer time.”

We can keep criminals in jail by approving Measure J on the May 14 ballot.

Measure J would authorize a sales tax of just half of 1%, providing enough money to build and operate the new, 6,700-bed Gypsum Canyon Jail.

This facility is part of a long-term master plan to meet our jail needs through the year 2006.

Measure J also will provide funding for a new Juvenile Hall to help rehabilitate young criminals.

Fortunately, the debate over where to build a jail is over. The Board of Supervisors elected remote Gypsum Canyon after more than seven years of studies at a cost of $7.8 million.

If Measure J passes, the first phase of the Gypsum Canyon Jail (3,700 beds) could be completed within five years.

If we don’t build a jail at Gypsum Canyon, we might have to wait as long as 15 years to go through the entire site-selection process again and then build a jail somewhere else.

To police officers who have to patrol the streets every day, another 10 years of delay is totally unacceptable.

Ten more years without a jail means 10 more years of total disrespect for the law among gang members, drug dealers, and others who prey upon society. And that means more crime and more innocent victims.

People who don’t want a jail built near their homes should realize that having a jail in their back yard is better than having thousands of criminals loose on the streets. We need a jail somewhere, and we need to pay for it.

That’s not pleasant, but the fact is that it costs taxpayers more money to rearrest, retry and re-convict criminals than it does to build a new jail.

And imagine the costs of allowing criminals to remain free to commit more crimes!

Measure J is an investment in public safety. It will give police the jails we need to deter crime.

If people are serious about fighting gangs, crime and drugs, they’ll vote yes on Measure J on May 14.