Jail System Demands Officials’ Attention : * Supervisors, Voters Must Stop Evading Responsibility

Several years ago, officials in Orange were promised that if they allowed Orange County to expand the Theo Lacy Branch Jail, only minimum- and medium-security prisoners would be housed behind the bars. Last month the promise was broken, and four dozen maximum-security inmates were moved into the facility on The City Drive.

Orange City Council members and residents predictably were outraged, with some erroneously blaming Sheriff Brad Gates. It was not Gates who promised the ban on maximum-security inmates, but other county officials, including then-Supervisor Don R. Roth. And when Orange wound up suing the county over the expansion anyway, angry county officials contended the deal was off. They warned that if the county won the lawsuit, which it did, it would put higher-classification inmates at Theo Lacy when it had to.

Gates said the inmates had to be housed at Lacy because he had no room elsewhere. He said that for years the department had been forced to turn loose some inmates before they served their full sentences, because the cells were needed for other criminals. Last year the department reported releasing 10,141 inmates early for lack of jail space. Among them were 183 convicted of assault with a deadly weapon.

Wednesday will mark the 16th anniversary of a federal judge’s order to Orange County to improve conditions in its jail system. The judge waited another seven years before finding that Gates and the five county supervisors were in contempt for not heeding his 1978 order. The problem then, as now, was that when a judge ruled on the jail, or a riot broke out, or a new lawsuit was filed, the system was routinely deemed to be undergoing a “crisis.” But after much talk, and on rare occasions some action, the issue disappeared.

One of the more obvious problems is that no supervisor wants a new jail built in his or her district. The three supervisors who already have a jail in their districts do not want them expanded or upgraded to take tougher inmates. All assume they are reflecting the voters’ wishes. But it may be time to ask the voters again, and see if what is thought to be an electorate afraid that crime is increasing is willing to put a jail in its own district.

That goes for financing, too. If the county’s residents are truly concerned about crime and think locking people up is a way to help solve the problem, they should be willing to pay for new jails, either through taxes or bonds. In 1991, pollsters reminded county residents that Gates was forced to release accused criminals because there was no room at the jail to hold them while they awaited trial. Sixty percent of respondents said they would pay an extra half-cent sales tax to build a new jail in Gypsum Canyon, 10 miles east of Anaheim. But four months after the poll, when countywide voting on a ballot measure proposing a sales tax increase took place, it was defeated by a 3-1 margin.

The recent flap over maximum-security prisoners in Orange is a reminder that the problem of jail overcrowding has not gone away, even if it has largely faded from public discussion. Ideas worth more consideration are possible public-private partnerships on jails like the one planned in Seal Beach, improved municipal jail facilities, and finding sites for alcohol detoxification facilities. In recent years new cells have been added and such alternatives to jail as confinement at home have been expanded.

Those represent progress, but they are not solutions. County supervisors need to devote far more attention to the problem.