Grand Jury Calls for Plan to Ease Jail Crowding : Report: Panel urges officials to explore possibilities of taxes and building a new facility at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

The Orange County Grand Jury urged local leaders Wednesday to take control of the decade-long problem of jail overcrowding, warning that further delay could seriously erode the future effectiveness of law enforcement officers.

The grand jury found a shortage of 3,615 beds in the county system, which has resulted in the release or turning away of “tens of thousands” of people who would normally spend time in jail.

“If the therapeutic effects of jail are denied to too many people who deserve it, then the threat of jail as a means of social control becomes hollow,” the report stated. “The issue cannot be avoided. The county’s leadership must deal with it.”

As possible starting points, jurors suggested that the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, scheduled for closure in 1999, be considered as a site for a future county lockup.

“If the federal government opts to build a prison at the Marine base, what better opportunity could be asked for the county?” the grand jury said. “Parochial interests aside, imagine a county jail nestled up to a federal prison.”

Although no source of revenue has been identified to pay for such construction, jurors urged that all possibilities be explored, including the most politically unpopular.

“This leads us to taxes, the dreaded ‘T’ word,” the report stated. “A fractional sales tax, less than one-half of one cent, would provide . . . the revenue to construct and sustain a 900-bed facility. Sales taxes have to be included in the revenue-planning mix.”

The grand jury’s recommendations found a frustrated audience at the County Hall of Administration, where officials have been faced with jail overcrowding troubles for the past 10 years. In 1991, local voters rejected a plan, known as Measure J, that would have raised the sales tax by half a cent for new jail construction in Gypsum Canyon.

“The Measure J initiative went down in flames,” Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder said Wednesday. “I implore the citizenry to get involved, because we really need their help. When there was a tax increase proposed, the voters didn’t like that. This kind of thing is matter of shared responsibility. We (the Board of Supervisors) can’t do it alone.”

County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider said possible solutions to the overcrowding problem have always been blocked by too little money and not necessarily a lack of political will.

“Even if we had a site to build a jail and state bond money for construction, the problem has always been the maintenance and operating costs,” Schneider said. “That’s a big ticket item.”

At the proposed Gypsum Canyon site, officials estimated, a jail would have cost at least $100 million a year to operate.

Unless there is a change of heart among the voters, Schneider said the county would continue its current course of adding jail beds to existing facilities as money becomes available.

The county has added 1,120 jail beds to existing facilities since 1987 at the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange and at the Intake/Release Center in Santa Ana. But the state has provided 75% of the construction costs for those additions and expansions, and jurors reported that the state is unlikely to “be such a helpful partner today.”

County facilities have a current capacity of 3,821 beds, but the grand jury said the county was actually in need of 7,436 beds.

“That shortage manifests itself in the literal releasing or turning away annually for lack of beds tens of thousands of persons, persons would normally spend time in jail,” the report stated.

Jurors predicted that the state’s new “three strikes” law, which provides lifetime prison sentences for three-time felons, would only worsen the county’s troubles.

“Even now, the state prison (system) cannot always absorb inmates as fast as the county can process them,” jurors said. “The county will be forced to hold state-bound inmates longer, tying up precious beds--as the shortage becomes more acute.”

There are plans for additional expansion at Theo Lacy, but the grand jury said the county was in need of a long-term plan for its future needs, especially in light of the new sentencing mandates.

“I don’t see any long-range planning in place at all,” Supervisor William G. Steiner said. “What we’re seeing is short-term approaches because there is no money.”