O.C. Developer Floats Proposal for Private Jail

Local developer Kathryn Thompson, convinced that the private sector can turn a profit in the jail business, has quietly begun talking with government officials about building a jail in Garden Grove or elsewhere in the county.

“We’re on the fast track,” Thompson said Thursday. “We will be designing, building and financing a detention center--hopefully in a public-private partnership. . . . Our mission is to solve this critical (jail overcrowding) problem.”

The idea is one of several far-ranging proposals mentioned in a draft memo from the county administrative office which has circulated this week and has drawn the ire of some county supervisors because of financial concerns.

A copy of the memo was obtained by The Times on Thursday. It suggests that the county consider relocating many of its female prisoners from the 300-bed Women’s Jail in Santa Ana to either the James A. Musick minimum-security facility in Lake Forest or to an unidentified and as yet unbuilt site in Garden Grove.

Such a move would free the women’s jail for use in housing some male inmates who require maximum security and are now held in an adjoining facility in Santa Ana. Finding space for maximum-security men has proven one of the county’s biggest hurdles in its long-running and unsuccessful effort to solve the jail dilemma.

The future of the county’s strained jail system darkened last year when a four-year, $7.3-million effort to build a jail in Gypsum Canyon in Anaheim Hills collapsed because of legislative and fiscalproblems.

Since then, the Board of Supervisors has agreed to move ahead with a short-term plan that could nearly double the number of beds at the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange, despite a pending legal challenge by city officials.

Even if the county is successful in fending off that lawsuit, it is still left with no clear long-term solutions. County officials project that with arrests climbing, they will be short 2,478 jail beds by 1995.

The memo from the county administrative office, dated March 25, is a draft of proposals which staff members said may be worth exploring later. These include:

- Expanding jail housing at Theo Lacy, Musick and/or the Santa Ana complex; or building a jail at a 7.5-acre county parcel near Katella Avenue and Douglas Road in the Anaheim area, or on other county-owned property.

- Working with cities to build and run an alcohol-drug treatment center at an unidentified site for inmates with up to six months of time left to serve.

- Exploring potential partnerships with cities and private parties.

But the future of the memo and its proposals appears uncertain because of the harsh reaction it has received from some county supervisors and their staffs, officials said.

The memo has drawn anger not so much because of its specific proposals, but rather because of an absence of financial backing in the jail equation, even as the county faces a $65-million budget shortfall for the next fiscal year.

“It’s fantasy land--there’s no reality to it,” Dan Wooldridge, an aide to Supervisor Don R. Roth on jail issues, said of the memo. “And all it takes is to mention the name of one community (as a possible jail site) to get the people upset.”

Wooldridge said Roth “voiced certain concerns” about the memo to officials in the county administrative office.

While reluctant to talk about the memo publicly, other county officials voiced similar concerns about how to pay for any of the proposals mentioned.

“It’s a paper tiger,” said one official who asked not to be identified. “If there’s no money, none of this matters. . . . Shouldn’t (the financing of a new jail) be the focus?”

Asked about the memo, County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider acknowledged: “It’s got some people riled, but I’m not going to say any more about it. It was an internal, preliminary document . . . and the draft is going to be revised.”

While the long-term proposals may change, one idea that seems to have broad backing is that of looking to the private sector for help.

Sheriff Brad Gates, who was unavailable for comment Thursday, has voiced reservations about privatizing jail operations, but the idea has won some support from a range of other officials in county government.

And Thompson--one of the county’s biggest real estate developers--appears intent on taking the lead in the subject.

In a letter to the supervisors dated March 27, Thompson forwarded what she called “a formal statement of interest to the County of Orange” to build and operate a women’s jail for the county’s use.

In an interview, Thompson said she has quietly been pursuing the idea for 18 months and, under a company incorporated within the last year as Detention Services of California, has assembled a team of specialists to do it.

Citing nationwide studies, Thompson said she believes that a private company could operate a jail for 10% to 40% less money than the government, running it more efficiently and providing more flexibility in its services.

Thompson said she has already made a “considerable” financial investment in pursuing the idea but said she was unsure of how much.

She described the project as in the “early stages,” but moving ahead quickly. She said Detention Services is bidding on construction of a 48-bed jail for the city of Santa Ana and is talking to officials in other cities about broader plans as well.

She declined to name those other cities, but officials in Garden Grove confirmed that they have been contacted by Thompson about building a 250- to 300-bed jail.

Late last month, the City Council heard about the idea from staff members.

“The concept was OK with them (council members), and they said, ‘Explore it,’ ” said Deputy City Manager Mike Fenderson.

Fenderson said a jail in Garden Grove would allow the city to avoid the $175-per-prisoner fee it is now paying to the county for housing those arrested locally at county jails.

And Garden Grove Councilman Mark Leyes said the idea of relocating the county’s women prisoners to a new local jail might make it more palatable to the community. “That (a women’s jail) tends to be lower-security prisoners,” he said.

Leyes said he opposed plans several years ago for expanding the county jail facilities in Santa Ana because he feared “spill-off” into his neighboring city. But this latest proposal has struck a more responsive chord, he said.

“It intrigues me because it really embraces the idea of privatization of government service,” he said. “It’s a for-profit jail.”