Tipping the Scales : For $100 a Night, Offenders Can Do Their Time in Less Crowded City Jails

For $100 a night, the amenities are few. Your room is a 20-square-foot cinder-block box with barely enough room for a metal bunk bed, toilet and sink.

The meals come straight from the freezer to the microwave to you: Salisbury steak for dinner, macaroni and cheese for lunch. The floor is cold concrete and the only views are from behind steel prison bars.

The Fullerton City Jail is no vacationer’s paradise. But city officials believe that offenders sentenced to jail time for nonviolent crimes such as drunk driving and petty theft will gladly fork over $100 a day to do their time in Fullerton and avoid the even less pleasant Orange County Jail.

Fullerton is the latest of several cities to adopt “Pay-to-Stay” programs. Advocates say the service generates revenue for cities, makes a modest dent in county jail overcrowding and offers an alternative for “minor offenders” who are reluctant about a stay in the county detention system.

“It’s for a person who feels more comfortable in a smaller facility,” said Capt. Gary Maiten of the Seal Beach Police Department, where offenders pay $65 a night to serve their sentences. “Frankly, maybe they feel safer here than in a larger county jail.”

But activists question the fairness of offering such alternatives to those who can afford them while poor inmates have no choice but to serve their time in County Jail.

“Justice is supposed to be served to each one equally,” said Amin David, chairman of Los Amigos of Orange County, a civil rights group. The program “seems to give an imbalance to the scales of justice.”

Officials who run Pay-to-Stay programs admit that the service is most practical for those who can afford the daily rate. Low-risk offenders are typically sentenced to County Jail but can request that the judge allow them to serve the time in a city facility.

Fullerton Police Capt. Ron Rowell said the department has received inquiries from several law firms since an advertisement for the program ran in a local legal publication this year.

The ad takes a direct approach: “Avoid the County Jail--Serve your sentence in a quiet, safe place.”

“I think what we can expect is someone who is basically a law-abiding citizen who is sentenced for some low-grade” offense, Rowell said.

Though some inmates might find city jails less intimidating than the county system, Rowell and others stressed that their facilities are no country clubs.

The Fullerton City Jail consists of 11 cells that can accommodate at least 17 inmates. To comply with state law, paying inmates are held in separate cells from prisoners who have just been arrested.

Inmates receive three meals a day and can make collect calls from their cells. Most inmates share one television situated in a hallway, though one deluxe cell contains its own television and alarm clock.

City jails typically cater to offenders serving a few days in jail or those in programs that allow them to work during the week and spend weekends behind bars. But Rowell said Fullerton would consider housing paying inmates for longer periods of time.

While Seal Beach and Huntington Beach have accommodated numerous paying prisoners, the Fullerton jail has housed only one: A woman serving two days for petty theft.

City jails contrast sharply with the county’s main low security facility, the James A. Musick Branch Jail in Irvine. Musick’s more than 1,000 “low-risk” inmates live in dormitories and tents, eat together in a cafeteria and can take part in work details and sports activities.

“It’s a much more open environment with a lot of activities available,” said Lt. Ron Wilkerson of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Fullerton’s Pay-to-Stay program has been publicized in at least one national magazine. The September issue of Washington Monthly contained a brief item on the service under the tongue-in-cheek headline: “For $10 more, the warden will leave a mint on your pillow.”