‘Felony Junior College’

San Diego’s private work-furlough centers, created to relieve jailovercrowding by accepting low-risk criminals, are the only three in the state that operate with no law-enforcement supervision and are not required to tell the courts if convicts violate probation.

Nor is any screening required, as it is in publicly operated furlough programs, to see whether the convicts are likely to obey the rules and stay out of trouble.

As a result, in the past two years, judges have sentenced to the centers offenders who later were arrested for possession of drugs, firearms and other crimes. At one location, three residents were arrested within a two-week period in May for drug use.

A felon assigned to another private program never showed up and didn’t end up in jail until he shot a sheriff’s deputy.

One private work-furlough resident arrested for selling cocaine testified in court last month that he used the drug but avoided mandatory narcotics testing by bribing a work-furlough employee. Opening a private furlough center requires no particular background or training.

“There are no guarantees these places are being monitored properly,” said Gary Schons, head of the state attorney general’s office in San Diego. “They just put a bunch of criminals together. It’s like felony junior college.”

Despite the problems, and the demise of several private centers that have gone out of business over the years, state court judges in San Diego County continue to sentence convicts to the centers, arguing that without the private effort, criminals would have to be released outright because of jail overcrowding. Because the convicts must pay for the furlough themselves, such sentences also mean no cost to the taxpayer.

“We need places that take people who are minimum risk, who can maintain their employment and not stand on welfare lines,” said Judge Frederic L. Link, supervising judge of Superior Court’s criminal division. “I make no bones about it. I wish I didn’t have to use them. But what are we supposed to do? We don’t have the jail beds.”

But the “residents,” as the centers’ inhabitants are called, are not monitored by the county probation officers or the Sheriff’s Department, as they are in the public program, which supervises 170 convicts.

The county maintains a rigid set of standards for its own work-furlough system, and similar private facilities in Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara counties all have contracts with the government to do the same. Counties must follow strict requirements for counseling, housing, safety, security, drug testing, recreation, construction and health standards.

While the city of San Diego inspects the private facilities for zoning, licensing and building code requirements, and the state Board of Corrections makes an announced visit once every two years, no law officer checks whether the residents are keeping within the law and following the rules of their probation. And frequently they aren’t.

“The courts have traded off a lower jail population and compromised the safety and security of the citizens,” said Robert Amador, deputy district attorney for a countywide drug and gang task force, which made three arrests of residents from one facility within two weeks.

The county district attorney’s office has been investigating the facilities since 1989, but has never legally challenged the placement of criminals into private work furlough. However, prosecutors are expected to protest such placements in court whenever they occur, said Lou Boyle, a chief deputy district attorney in charge of the North County, South Bay and El Cajon offices.

“We try to make the record clear,” Boyle said. “We especially don’t make drug offenders included. Sending a dope dealer to a low-grade hotel where he is free to do work and is not supervised inside the facility is just fraught with peril.”

In January, 1990, then state Atty. Gen. John K. Van De Kamp ruled that the state trial court had no authority to place convicts into private work furlough without a county contract.

Besides meeting certain minimum jail standards, the contract ensures that private operators answer to a county work-furlough administrator, who is entrusted with making sure that the facilities meet all rules and regulations, Van De Kamp ruled.

Three months after the attorney general’s 1990 decision, the San Diego county counsel’s office rebutted the ruling with one of its own. Courts were indeed authorized to place convicts in private work furlough, the county said. State court judges, who had been leery of making any private placements, resumed sentencing to private work furlough.

Buttressed by the county’s opinion and its own ordinance approved earlier this year, the San Diego City Council recently approved a new 438-bed facility in Sorrento Valley, despite fierce opposition from business owners in the area.

Before it made that decision, however, the city assembled a subcommittee on work-furlough expansion that included judges, prosecutors, county and city employees, work-furlough representatives and others to draft a new ordinance that sought to tighten guidelines on how private centers should be operated.

The city’s Planning Commission unanimously rejected the project, saying it should have fewer than 438 beds. The City Council made its own unanimous vote: It authorized the center to have 250 beds when it first opens in September and to seek permission for the balance of the beds six months later.

A city-hired work-furlough administrator will also be hired this fall, city officials said, in a similar role to the county’s work furlough.

Private work furlough in San Diego began about 12 years ago as part of a Navy program designed to allow enlisted men and women to serve time for minor sentences rather than be kicked out of the service.

Supporters of the program, under which those sentenced must work or seek employment and pay $25 a day for their lodging and meals, say it is a meaningful way for some to pay their debt to society without being exposed to jail life.

Ernest H. Wright, president of the Pacific Furlough Facility, considered the city’s best, said his 87-bed facility on Boston Avenue in Logan Heights meets or exceeds every standard set forth by the county, state or federal governments.

“Here we have a private initiative trying to solve a problem,” he said. “We should be encouraged, embraced. These people would be on the street if they weren’t in here. And it’s not costing the taxpayer a thing.”

On a recent tour of the Boston Avenue facility, Wright pointed proudly to his 32-member trained staff, his front-desk security that requires residents to sign in and out, his kitchen that serves diet meals, and other features of the converted warehouse, which opened in 1989.

Pacific maintains 24-hour security and has many of the same features of the County Jail, including telephone calls and regular visitors’ hours. Men and women are separated by floors and all have their own beds.

Wright also is to operate the Sorrento Valley center, which will include room for job-training skills. Wright’s program has the enthusiastic endorsement of several judges from the Superior and Municipal courts, who have recommended he expand.

But in sentencing convicts to Pacific Furlough, judges have included four convicted child molesters and a violent offender, who all were moved from the facility two years ago after thunderous community opposition. Wright says the convicts were permitted at that time under an approved, but less stringent, list of crimes that has since been strengthened.

In another more recent case, a judge sentenced James Michael Bright, a 26-year-old transient, to Pacific Furlough in April despite a 1987 conviction for possession of an explosive device. While on probation, he was arrested in February for carrying a loaded pistol.

Ordered to appear at Pacific on May 10 for a four-month stay, Bright never arrived, and a $25,000 warrant was issued for his arrest. Less than a month later, Bright allegedly shot sheriff’s Deputy Paul Kain three times after being pulled over while driving a stolen car. Nine days later, after a search by two dozen sheriff’s investigators, Bright was located and arrested.

Last November, Brett James Dost was sentenced to Pacific after pleading guilty to assault charges against Joe Phillips, a lineman for the San Diego Chargers. Phillips had suffered severe head and facial injuries when he was attacked outside a Mission Beach restaurant by Dost and two other men.

At Pacific, after Dost wandered into the female dormitory, he tested positive for drugs. As a result, his probation was revoked and he was sent back to jail. Last April, Link sent Dost to state prison.

Wright said that only 12% of his residents are returned to custody, as opposed to the 30% or so that were sent back when the operator first opened the facility in 1987 at a different location in Barrio Logan. Less than 1%, he said, leave the center in violation of their sentence and do not return.

“We’ve had 3,500 pass through our program,” Wright said. “You’re talking about just a few (problem) cases.”

About one-third of all the residents at his center have been convicted for drunk driving and another 20% for narcotics-related offenses. Most are felons, Wright said, but are not to include the most dangerous type, such as rapists and murderers.

At Mid-City Work Furlough, on Pacific Highway, three residents were arrested for narcotics possession within a two-week period in mid-May and early June.

A gang and drug unit headed by the district attorney’s office targeted Mid-City after it discovered one of its residents, Jean Babayan, with cocaine last December while he was working at a jewelry store.

At Babayan’s sentencing last month, Superior Court Judge Charles R. Hayes asked how he was able to escape detection for drug use. Sometimes, Babayan said, he would simply look at a list of when he was to be tested, have it delayed by a day or two and then pop vitamins and drink gallons of water to mask the drugs.

When the center gave a surprise test, Babayan said, he “asked one of the monitors to take care of me . . . . Some of the clients told me that it could be taken care of if you pay, which is what I’ve done.”

Hayes asked Babayan if he had bribed someone to make sure his test was positive.

“That’s true,” Babayan said.

“And what happened?” Hayes asked.

“It was substituted, I guess, for another one,” Babayan said.

Babayan is now in state prison.

Donna Woodley, who operates Mid-City, said all four residents left work furlough and did not return to the 84-bed facility. She said Babayan’s allegations are untrue and that he was routinely tested. The courts were notified in each case, she said.

“We have nothing to hide,” Woodley said. “These guys walked away and were reported. We have had about 1,200 successful residents.”

A third center, called T & J Women’s Home Society, also provides nine beds in San Diego. All three centers house a total of 190 residents.

Orange County has contracts with two private work-furlough centers, one with 80 beds in Buena Park and one with 30 beds in Anaheim. Since 1990, Los Angeles County has operated a 220-bed private center in the city of Los Angeles. Santa Clara County also has one center.

Without county supervision, many correctional officials believe, private vendors may cut corners.

“Our worry is that the only way some of these places can make money is to do some poverty pimping on what they pay their staff,” said Suzie Cohen, executive director of the California Probation, Parole and Correctional Assn. in Sacramento. “It is also in the private provider’s interest to keep the beds filled, so they may take in inappropriate people and keep them there”--even if the convict violates parole.

Pacific Furlough’s Wright said such fears are unfounded.

“We have so many referrals that we can pretty much keep all our beds filled,” he said, noting that 86 of his 87 beds were occupied last week. “It does us no good to keep troublemakers here. We don’t need the hassle. If they cause problems, the marshal’s office is brought right in.”

Wright, who refuses to discuss finances, gets his referrals from a team of three “court representatives,” whom he hires to scan court dockets for appropriate candidates. His employees have a regular working relationship with criminal defense attorneys to get names and to make recommendations to the court.

Link is so impressed with Pacific that he makes all his referrals to Wright. He said it is the county’s responsibility to offer centers a contract under which to operate. For their part, county officials have said oversight of the facilities would be too costly.

No matter what the judges or Wright says, Boyle of the district attorney’s office said private facilities need strict supervision.

“I don’t care if you have 26 bishops running the thing,” he said. “Creating a system where people of unknown background and reputation are accepting prisoners from the court is not a good idea.”