City Furlough Program Has No Record of Convicts : Detention: City program, unlike the county’s, is run by overworked planning department employees who don’t even have the names of people assigned to private facilities.

The city of San Diego keeps no record of convicts sentenced to private work-furlough programs, makes no effort to verify whether residents are housed there legally and has never audited the facilities.

Without such monitoring, nobody can be sure whether the facilities are too crowded, have proper security or if the convicts sentenced to private facilities even show up.

The Times reported Sunday that private work-furlough centers in San Diego, created to relieve jail crowding in a county where the problem is severe, operate with no law enforcement supervision and are not required to tell courts if convicts violate probation.

In at least eight instances within the past year, convicted felons assigned by judges to the facilities have been arrested for possessing drugs, firearms or other offenses. One felon sent to a facility never showed up and wound up seriously wounding a sheriff’s deputy.

The city’s facilities are supervised by overworked staff members of the city’s planning department, who do nothing more than survey a monthly summary of criminal offenses committed by the furlough residents, which does not include their names.

The planners, who have no law enforcement background, also review a list of the average number of residents provided each month by the private centers but do not visit the facilities to make sure the numbers are accurate or that the population does not exceed its limit.

“This confirms what we’ve always maintained: nobody has any idea who is in these places,” said Lou Boyle, a deputy district attorney. “The supervision and monitoring is left to the facility, and people at the facilities are untrained. They are low-grade hotels for convicts.”

Private work-furlough centers are businesses in which residents avoid county jail by agreeing to pay about $25 a day for food and board and to maintain a job while following the rules of the center.

In contrast, the county’s work furlough program is staffed by probation officers--who get copies of each court order committing a convict to their program and who study other court records, such as psychological reports, before deciding whether work furlough is appropriate.

Such screening does not occur in the city-supervised programs after state court judges order convicts to the private centers.

Planners are not certain whether the proper number of security guards are assigned to watch work furlough residents or whether the convicts actually report to the facilities once they finish work, as required.

“We’re land-use planners getting into operational issues” for work furlough, said Tracy Reed, an associate planner who is assigned to monitor the city’s three private centers and its 190 residents. “These (centers) should be police-regulated businesses, and they’re not.”

Unlike private facilities in Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara counties, which have county contracts requiring strict monitoring by peace officers, San Diego’s facilities go virtually unchecked other than a records inspection by the state Board of Corrections every two years.

City code enforcement officers make visits whenever a complaint against the centers is made. Building inspectors make yearly inspections, as they do for other structures.

And, although the city is permitted to review the center’s files at any time, “we have never exercised that option,” Reed said Wednesday. “Unfortunately, the planning department and code enforcement is reactive, not proactive.”

At a City Council meeting Tuesday, in which public concerns were raised over the private placement centers, city staffers assured council members that everything was being done to make sure the facilities are properly monitored and that the cases assigned there reviewed thoroughly before a placement is made.

“We need to be able to say that our program is good and our city is cognizant of potential problems,” councilwoman Judy McCarty said at the meeting.

A council-approved ordinance in April keeps the centers from being located in residential areas. An accompanying conditional-use permit will tighten restrictions on the type of criminals that can be housed in work furlough, but so far it applies only to a new facility not yet opened in Sorrento Valley and not on the three that exist.

The council is also expected to hire a work furlough administrator by October, who is to make spot inspections of the facilities. The administrator will have code-enforcement training but will not be a law enforcement officer.

Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer said the council will be reviewing the ordinance next month to “see if it needs a touch-up to help safeguard the safety of the public.”

Reed of the planning department said private work furlough centers should be licensed and supervised by the San Diego Police Department, just as businesses that cater to adult entertainment are. But the city manager’s officer has already rejected the suggestion.