Judge Says Officials Have Done Their Best to Ease Jail Crowding : Courts: County is in ‘substantial’ compliance with court orders to eliminate overcrowding, the judge rules.

Indicating that close apparently is good enough in tough fiscal times, a Superior Court judge Wednesday said county officials had essentially met his order to cut inmate levels at six overcrowded jails.

One of the six jails remained Wednesday over court-ordered population caps and inmates at the downtown San Diego jail still sleep occasionally on the floor. But El Cajon Superior Court Judge James A. Malkus said there “has been substantial, but not exact, compliance” with the demand he issued last month that inmate counts at the six jails be cut by June 30.

Malkus, who is monitoring conditions at county jails under two lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, added that he expects the jails to stay in “substantial” compliance for the next few months--until a new, 1,500-bed jail might open, a facility that county officials maintain will relieve the crowding at the county’s chronically jammed jails.

Surveys consistently rank the county’s jails among the nation’s most overfilled. The ACLU says the crowding leads to violence and inhumane conditions. The financially strapped county consistently has maintained it does not have the money to solve the problem.

Over the past decade, judges have brought the downtown San Diego jail and five outlying jails--men’s facilities in Vista, El Cajon, South Bay and Descanso plus the women’s Las Colinas jail in Santee--under population caps.

Two newer jails, the Las Colinas men’s facility and a medium security jail at East Mesa, have not been brought before the court. Nor has the newly built, 1,500-bed maximum security jail, also located at East Mesa, 7 miles off Interstate 805 near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The 512-bed medium-security East Mesa facility is in operation, but the maximum-security jail has been standing empty for months. There hasn’t been enough money in the budget to pay guards to staff the maximum-security wings, county officials have said.

Officials have vowed to open the East Mesa maximum-security jail sometime in 1993, possibly at the beginning of the year.

Whether East Mesa is available or not, Malkus said last month, the court-ordered caps must be met. At a June 2 hearing, after the ACLU complained that inmates were sleeping on the floor at three jails, he said the time to comply was at hand.

Racing to meet Malkus’ June 30 deadline, the Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jails, took back control of the Descanso facility from the probation department, which had been running it as an honor camp. That gave the sheriff’s department an added 240 beds.

Sheriff Jim Roache also opted to double-bunk the East Mesa medium-security facility, expanding its capacity from 296 to 512 beds.

On June 30, four of the jails were under the caps and the hold-outs, South Bay and the Las Colinas men’s facility, were only over by a handful of inmates.

On Wednesday, only the Vista jail was over its cap, 13 inmates over the limit of 886. Each of the other jails was under its cap.

The newly expanded East Mesa medium-security jail held 506 inmates, six under the limit, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

Two inmates did spend the night on the floor at the downtown San Diego jail. But those two were transvestites who had to be housed--for their own protection from other inmates--in a special section of the jail that has 16 beds, jail officials said. For one night, that section held 18 men, Deputy County Counsel Nathan Northup told Malkus on Wednesday.

Alex Landon, an ACLU lawyer, said the Wednesday inmate count left him pleased but “not completely satisfied.”

The county’s plan for financing the East Mesa maximum-security jail relies on a contract signed last year that calls for the federal government to house some 130 inmates a day at the county’s downtown San Diego jail.

Landon asked Malkus Wednesday for an order that would cut the number of federal inmates at the downtown San Diego jail when the number of county inmates exceeds a cap. “It is a serious matter to go over the court-ordered caps by even one (inmate),” Landon said.

But Malkus declined to issue that order. The county is “running out of options” and it would not be “appropriate” to limit that funding contract, particularly since county officials worked in good faith to meet the June 30 deadline, Malkus said.

The judge set the next hearing in the case for Sept. 2.