Everything Except the Inmates

On the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles stands a sparkling new jail, a multimillion-dollar monument to public demands for locking up more bad guys.

But the sheriff’s deputies who guard Twin Towers Correctional Facility have an unusual job: They’re on the lookout for people breaking in, not out. They patrol the ultramodern corridors searching for vagrants and vandals. They sit in a high-tech control room with nearly a dozen television monitors, scanning vacant doorways.

And perhaps no less crucial, they help flush hundreds of toilets to keep the plumbing working.

In other words, the joint is empty.

Although Los Angeles County’s overburdened jail system is bursting at the seams--breeding everything from race riots to health risks--no one has been incarcerated in the facility since its completion last fall.

In all, the state-of-the-art jail took more than four years to build and cost $373 million in taxpayer-backed bonds. But because of budget shortfalls and bureaucratic bickering not a penny of the estimated $100 million needed annually to operate the place has been allocated.

What’s more, Los Angeles County taxpayers are being saddled with an annual debt of $20 million on bonds the county sold to bolster the state’s contribution to the jail’s construction.

That Twin Towers remains unused is even all the more incredible considering that, because of jail overcrowding, thousands upon thousands of county inmates are regularly being freed by the Sheriff’s Department after serving fractions of their sentences.

“It’s frustrating to me as the sheriff, and it has to be frustrating to every citizen in this community, that there is this facility sitting there staring out at the world going unused,” said Sheriff Sherman Block.

Frustrating is not the word some critics would choose.

“Right now [Twin Towers] is a monument to inefficiency and a waste of taxpayer dollars,” said Joel Fox, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. “This is just another black eye for Los Angeles County.”

In recent days, as racial violence continues to jolt the county’s jampacked jail in Castaic, Twin Towers has found its way onto the political radar. Decision-makers suddenly are talking of making the jail’s opening a top priority, of scratching together enough money to open at least part of the facility.

But when the rhetoric ends and the issue of cold cash begins, state and county officials insist it is the other’s responsibility to shoulder the operating costs and that the money isn’t there. Amid the feuding, the status quo reigns.

If nothing else, the fiasco has succeeded in exposing an important fact in the emotionally charged debate over whether the current prison-building boom is the path to safer streets: Casting a ballot for more jails is no guarantee of occupancy.

“The truth is, when people vote on bond issues, they’re not told that it’s strictly for construction and that there is no operating money,” said Emma Childers of the Friends Committee on Legislation, which fought against the bond issues used to finance Twin Towers. “Where that money is going to come from nobody talks about.”

One person who did have something to say was Ed Edelman, who was on the county Board of Supervisors when the panel voted in 1989 to expand the intolerably crowded jail system.

In a prophetic speech, Edelman warned that the county would have no way to staff and supply new jails without stealing money from cash-strapped health and welfare programs. He was on the losing side.

“What I said then I believed very strongly,” said Edelman, now a senior fellow at Rand, a Santa Monica think tank. “We want to be tough on crime, but we don’t have the resources to be tough. I’m not surprised the jail sits empty today.”

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And what a jail it is, a model of contemporary and utilitarian design for which little expense was spared.

Located across the street from the decaying Men’s Central Jail east of Chinatown, Twin Towers was envisioned as the jewel of the county’s system of seven operating jails, housing a total of 18,349 inmates.

The mauve-colored structure has two towers--one seven stories tall, the other eight. Inside, there are virtually no metal bars. The compact, two-person cells are sealed with tempered glass, providing deputies with better visibility. The absence of large dormitories, such as those in which violence has flared at other county jails, should give deputies an easier time locking down the facility if a riot broke out.

Also unlike other county jails, each cell has an intercom system connected to guard stations within Twin Towers.

In another new twist, every floor has facilities to provide inmates with food, exercise, medicine and visitor rooms. This eliminates the constant--and sometimes dangerous--mass movement of inmates, thus improving safety for both the deputies and prisoners.

Moreover, Twin Towers has a massive medical building, equipped with an advanced air filtration system aimed at preventing the spread of communicable diseases, including tuberculosis, which is roughly three times more prevalent among county inmates than the public.

This is not to say the jail is without imperfections. In fact, sheriff’s officials concede they are concerned about one design flaw dubbed “the triangle of death” by one observer.

The problem is that the doors of many adjoining cells are hinged on opposite sides. When the doors are opened simultaneously, they form wedges big enough for an inmate to be pushed into, trapped and beaten.

“It is a security concern,” said Capt. Patrick J. Mallon, who oversaw the jail’s construction for the Sheriff’s Department. “But there is nothing that can be done.”

Still, despite such concerns, there is no argument that Twin Towers is vastly superior to any other county jail facility, incorporating the latest prison technology.

“Not to use it when you’ve got all these problems in the system doesn’t make sense,” said Paul L. Hoffman, former legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which monitors conditions at county jails.

It was the ACLU, in fact, that helped set in motion the events that eventually led to Twin Towers’ construction, even though the organization is not an advocate for prison building as a way to curb crime.

In 1978, the ACLU won a federal lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department alleging that living conditions in the county jails were so horrendous they were unconstitutionally cruel. As a result, the court ordered improvements.

But a complication emerged. Several years after the ACLU suit, the jail population soared to unprecedented levels, making it increasingly difficult for the Sheriff’s Department not only to meet the judicial mandates but even to find places for everyone to sleep.

Sheriff’s officials began planning for new jails, and voters approved a pair of bond issues--Proposition 52 in 1986 and Proposition 86 in 1988--that would begin a new wave of jail construction across the state.

The measures generated nearly $248 million for the county, which sold another $125 million in bonds for the expansion that would later become known as Twin Towers, with room enough for 4,100 beds.

Why those beds remain empty has become a classic exercise in passing the buck.

In a perfect governmental world, the county would pay for the jail’s operating costs. But county officials say they don’t have the money because the state has hoarded $1 billion in local property tax revenues during the past few years.

At the same time, county officials say, Sacramento legislators have refused to underwrite the hundreds of millions of dollars in costs associated with the state’s new “three strikes” law.

One of the chief reasons the county jail system is so crowded is because felony defendants are increasingly opting for trials, rather than plea bargains, to avoid risking a third strike and a possible life sentence. While awaiting their day in court, they remain in county custody.

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State officials, for their part, blame federal executives. They say the U.S. government has failed to reimburse the county $50 million to $70 million annually for jailing illegal immigrants.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s office also accused the county of not taking full advantage of money generated by a half-cent sales tax hike voters approved in 1993 to help fund public safety.

A good example of this kind of incessant finger-pointing emerged for the first time into public view last Wednesday.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick held a news conference outside the jail where she and other top local officials demanded that the state tap into what they called a $250-million surplus to open and staff Twin Towers.

But the governor’s office denied that the state had a huge pot of money available for the jail. A spokesman said whatever extra money there is in Sacramento could vanish if state Senate Democrats are unwilling to freeze current welfare levels.

In addition, some of Chick’s colleagues balked at her proposal, saying they’d rather see the money spent on vital social services. In the end, the council voted to send the governor a missive demanding that any surplus funds be spread among the jails, public education, homeless facilities, welfare and health care.

The bottom line for Twin Towers: no progress.

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The bureaucratic sniping is not exclusively reserved for the higher levels of government: Sheriff’s officials, for example, blame the county Board of Supervisors for not coughing up the money they need to staff the jail.

Since the winter riots at the Peter Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, Undersheriff Jerry Harper said his department has been exploring ways to get the jail opened with state and county officials, including county Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed and her staff.

A source close to the discussions said Reed’s office at one point suggested closing most of Pitchess jail--the county’s largest--and leaving open only its maximum-security compound. But that plan apparently was scrapped, the source said, because it would have generated only $39 million, far short of the $100 million needed to operate the new jail.

Reed, who insists her office never made such an offer, did acknowledge that closing existing jails to generate funds for Twin Towers is worth considering, along with studying ways to reduce the jail’s operating costs. One proposal on the table is to take $18 million from the county’s budget for the next fiscal year to open one of the towers for six months.

“I think it’s clear the public wants us to put people in jail who should be there,” Reed said.

There were many people in the early planning days of Twin Towers who, in fact, did not want the jail--full or otherwise.

A coalition of 300 residents and merchants from Chinatown to East Los Angeles held rallies and wrote letters, insisting that it was unfair for their community to have to support a fifth detention center.

Among the protesters was attorney Sharon Lowe, who represented the coalition. She recalled how the group raised the prospect that the county would lack money for staffing but no one listened much.

These days, Lowe drives past Twin Towers every morning as she takes her children to school. She and her fellow activists derive little joy from its vacancy.

“It’s no fun now to be in the position to say I told you so,” she said. “Because the community still gets screwed.”