ACLU Seeks Overhaul for County Jails : Justice: Jails are violating court-ordered inmate caps, suit says. Group also wants to bar taking into custody anyone charged with a misdemeanor on any day that any jail is over its limit.

Five San Diego County jails covered by court orders limiting the total of inmates have been severely crowded in recent weeks, with three of the five so jammed that prisoners are sleeping on floors, according to legal papers urging a judge to order sweeping changes.

Those three are the men’s jails in downtown San Diego, Vista and Chula Vista, according to a legal brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The El Cajon men’s and Las Colinas women’s jails have not had floor-sleepers but routinely have exceeded court-ordered inmate caps, the brief said.

The brief asks El Cajon Superior Court Judge James Malkus, who is monitoring conditions at the jails under two lawsuits filed by the ACLU, to order the county to lower the inmate totals. Filed late Tuesday, the brief also asks Malkus to bar the county from taking into custody anyone charged with a misdemeanor on any day that any jail is over its limit.

Malkus is scheduled to take up the requests at a hearing June 2.

National surveys consistently rank the county’s jails among the nation’s most crowded. According to the ACLU, the crowding leads to violence and inhumane conditions at the jails, which are run by the Sheriff’s Department.

The financially strapped county consistently has maintained that it does not have the cash to solve the problem.

It has been unable even to find funds to staff a newly built, 1,500-bed maximum-security jail on East Mesa, about 7 miles east of Interstate 805 near the U.S.-Mexico border. A 296-bed medium-security jail at East Mesa is open, but 216 additional beds there remain empty because of the county’s cash woes.

In 1980, a San Diego judge ruled that any count above 750 at the downtown jail was cruel and unusual punishment. In 1987, caps were slapped on the county’s outlying jails. Two newer county jails, the Las Colinas men’s facility and the East Mesa medium-security jail, have not been brought before the court.

After years of fighting the county in the courts, lawyer Alex Landon said in the brief filed Tuesday, the ACLU is tired of excuses and delays. Landon said the issue has reached a “point of pervasive, significant and intolerable non-compliance.”

He added in an interview Wednesday: “We have been very patient. We have bent over backwards to allow the county and the Sheriff’s Department time to get additional beds open. Unfortunately, the situation hasn’t become better. It has become worse.”

The downtown jail, according to Tuesday’s count, was 161 inmates over the population cap, leaving 88 prisoners to sleep on the floor. Vista, 51 over the cap, housed 67 floor-sleepers. South Bay, 163 over, held seven floor-sleepers.

The El Cajon jail was 97 inmates over its cap, and the Las Colinas women’s facility was 17 too high, according to the Tuesday report.

According to the legal brief, the downtown jail has been over its cap by 63 or more inmates every day since May 5. It was over the limit 11 of 30 days in April, the brief said.

The downtown jail actually is far more crowded than the numbers indicate, since hundreds of inmates each day are not counted against the cap. Two years ago, Malkus excluded from the count inmates on the fringe of the general population, including prisoners in certain medical beds, those pending release or in transit between jails.

On Tuesday, there actually were 1,083 inmates at the downtown jail, 333 over the cap of 750, the ACLU said.

The South Bay jail, the ACLU said, has exceeded its cap of 373 every single day in 1992 except March 12, and it was under the cap that day only because 41 of the 411 inmates actually there were “pending release” and not counted against the total. The El Cajon jail has been over its cap of 251 every day this month, the brief said.

The Vista jail has had floor-sleepers every day since May 3.

Apparently, the brief said, there are three reasons why the jail populations are so high.

Last year, the county contracted with the federal government to house up to 150 inmates a day at the downtown jail. Frequently, the daily count of federal inmates is at or near 150.

The deal was designed to relieve crowding at the downtown Metropolitan Correctional Center, the jail for inmates with cases in federal court, and to provide the county with money to help it fully open the East Mesa jail, about $2.7 million the first year.

As part of that deal, the county closed a 440-bed facility at Descanso, in eastern San Diego County, and opened the 296-bed medium-security jail at East Mesa, a net loss of 144 beds.

Finally, on April 17, Sheriff Jim Roache announced he was reversing a longtime policy and ordering people arrested for drunk driving to post bail before arraignment. The Sheriff’s Department’s “quick-release” policy had allowed drunk drivers booked on misdemeanors to simply sign a notice in court before being released.