Block Acts on $25-Million Cutback : Jail: The 161 sworn and civilian employees react with grief and relief to the plan to close the Mira Loma complex. They are promised transfers.

Sheriff’s deputies at the county’s Mira Loma Jail reacted with relief and grief at Tuesday’s announcement that the 40-year-old complex is closing, a victim of budget cuts that will force the removal of its more than 700 inmates starting almost immediately.

For the 161 sworn personnel and civilian employees at the west Lancaster complex, Sheriff Sherman Block’s decision finally settled a year of anxiety about their futures and that of the jail. But it also set in motion changes that affect their lives at home and on the job.

“Even though it hurts a lot of people, it’s almost a relief a decision has been made,” said Sgt. John Crabb, who oversees the jail’s operations. “It’s hard for outsiders to understand the depth of emotion people here feel. We’ve been bounced around quite a bit.”

Mira Loma, located on about 50 acres at the corner of Avenue I and 60th Street West, had been on a downward slide since county budget cuts last year substantially reduced its staffing, forcing the Sheriff’s Department to cut in half its 1,800-inmate population.

Then in late May this year amid budget debates, Block caused a furor by closing the jail and busing out its remaining 206 inmates. But the jail unexpectedly reopened three days later after county supervisors relented and gave the Sheriff’s Department interim funding through July.

“I told everybody since we reopened in May, ‘don’t do anything permanent because I don’t think this is going to be permanent,’ ” said Capt. Stephen Batchelor, the jail’s commander. “I suppose in the grand scheme of things, we should feel lucky we still have jobs.”

Now with the county’s budget adopted and a $25.5-million Sheriff’s Department cut in place, none of the sheriff’s officials interviewed Tuesday were expecting another reprieve for Mira Loma. “I don’t think that’s going to happen this time,” said Cmdr. Robert Pash of the Custody Division.

Mira Loma always has been at or near the top of Block’s jail closure lists in recent months. Sheriff’s officials said that is because of the jail’s age (part of it was built during World War II as pilot barracks), its remote location and the cost of busing inmates there.

Starting as early as today and continuing over the next two weeks, Batchelor said, the department will gradually reduce Mira Loma’s about 460 women inmates by transferring about a busload each day to Sybil Brand Institute in East Los Angeles, the only other major women’s jail facility in the county’s system.

Mira Loma’s contingent of about 250 male inmates will remain virtually until the jail’s projected closure of Aug. 14, because many of them operate the jail’s kitchen and do maintenance work that must continue until the end. Jail employees probably will be reassigned to new jobs Aug. 15.

Block promised that Mira Loma employees, most of whom live in the Antelope Valley area, will be transferred rather than laid off. But many will face long commutes to the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho, a jail complex in Castaic, and will lose their shift seniority with the change.

A seven-member crew of deputies and civilian employees will remain to oversee the closed Mira Loma facility, that dates back to 1941, but was first used by the Sheriff’s Department in 1953. The jail’s only other prior closure--in 1979 after tax-cutting Proposition 13 was approved by the state’s voters--lasted until mid-1983.

Because of the loss of women’s beds at Mira Loma, sheriff’s officials said they plan to convert four dormitories totaling 360 beds at the Pitchess North Facility to women’s use. The current Pitchess complex, consisting of five separate jails, holds only male inmates.

But even Pitchess is not a safe job haven. If voters in November do not agree to extend a current half-cent sales tax, sheriff’s officials said more cutbacks would be likely, including another jail closure that could hit one of the Pitchess sites.