Sheriff Says Detention at Home May End : Sentencing: The program came under scrutiny after the release of an 18-year-old drunk driver who killed someone.

San Diego County Sheriff Jim Roache said Monday that he is so discouraged by the problems associated with his department-run electronic home detention program for female criminals that he may abandon it altogether.

Roache is in the midst of an internal study into the workings of the controversial program, which came under scrutiny when sheriff’s corrections officials released an 18-year-old woman to home surveillance after she served 31 days of a yearlong sentence.

The woman, Renee Reid, had been convicted of killing someone while drunk, and the news of her release to home custody caused a mass outcry.

“I just may discontinue electronic surveillance because it’s become more trouble than it’s worth,” Roache said in an interview. “I don’t have enough staff to operate it or keep it working right. We just may not keep it at all.”

Meanwhile, San Diego County courts are revising sentencing procedures so judges can make it clear in official paperwork whether they want to admit offenders to electronic surveillance instead of jail.

In making the change, the Municipal and Superior courts are hoping to avoid the type of confusion that led to Reid’s release.

After the state attorney general’s office protested her release, it petitioned the courts for a new hearing of the Reid case and she was ordered back to jail.

Last month, Municipal Judge Terry J. Knoepp said he believed that, in originally sentencing Reid to a year in jail, he had prevented her from being enrolled in home detention because he had checked a box on a sentencing form that indicated she was not to be paroled.

But Roache and other sheriff’s officials, in defending their decision to release Reid, testified during Knoepp’s hearing last month that denying parole is different than denying admittance to home detention. Unless a judge orders otherwise, the sheriff has jurisdiction over who may be admitted to the program for women.

The county Probation Department runs the electronic surveillance program for men.

Although some judges prohibit home detention by having their clerks write specific orders on “minute forms,” others do not.

H. Ronald Domnitz, presiding judge of the San Diego Municipal Court, said the forms will now include a box that allows a judge to indicate that no parole and no admission to home detention should be granted, for both men and women.

“Most of us who order no early release mean no (electronic) bracelet release,” Domnitz said. “This will clear things up.”

Superior Court judges will also use the new form, said Frederic L. Link, the court’s presiding judge.

Both Link and Domnitz are vehemently opposed to electronic surveillance and hope it can be done away with, as Roache has suggested.

“The electronic dog collar is no punishment, it’s a joke,” Link said. “It allows someone to stay home with their big-screen TV and their filet mignon.”

Roache has maintained that using home detention is an alternate form of custody and a means of easing jail crowding. The county is under a longstanding court order to keep the number of inmates below a specific cap, but the numbers are routinely exceeded.

The sheriff’s comments Monday reflects his growing frustration with a limited staff and dwindling budget that has forced him to make drastic cuts in all areas of his department.

After Reid’s release, Roache came under intense criticism for backing up his staff’s decision to allow a convicted felon who had committed manslaughter to be allowed to serve out her sentence at home.

During the hearing, state prosecutors suggested that Reid had perhaps gotten special treatment because her father is a senior investigator with the county district attorney’s office. Sheriff’s officials have denied any such favoritism.

The electronic surveillance program, which includes about 20 female inmates, is staffed by two corrections counselors, one full-time and one part time. Both are expected to screen and interview potential candidates for the program, accept referrals from the court system, hook up the electronic bracelet to the inmates at home and, when possible, make surprise visits to ensure compliance.

Dick Ariessohn, who supervises the two counselors, said sheriff’s officials had talked about contracting the work to an outside company to visit inmates’ homes and hook them up to the system, which consists of attaching a tiny transmitter to an inmate’s leg. The transmitter sends signals to a nearby telephone and notifies the Sheriff’s Department if the inmate is beyond a 50-yard range.

Ariessohn is also revising the department’s policies and procedures on home surveillance to make the rules of eligibility more understandable to everyone associated with the program. The revised rules would still have made Reid eligible, Ariessohn said, because she was not considered a threat to society.