L.A. County Jail Inmates Serve Only 25% of Sentences

At a skyrocketing pace unmatched anywhere in the nation, tens of thousands of inmates are literally walking out the back doors of Los Angeles County’s overcrowded jails after serving little or none of their sentences behind bars.

Worse yet, thousands of criminals--as many as one in four, according to a survey undertaken by The Times and the city attorney’s office--commit new offenses within months of their early releases. If not for jail overcrowding, many would still have been behind bars at the time they committed the new crimes.

The average convict these days serves less than 25% of his sentence before being released by the Sheriff’s Department--a record-breaking low that amounts to roughly half the time he would have served four years ago.

Court officers and criminals alike say the early releases of inmates--including a massive “work release” program in which convicts spend their nights at home rather than in jail--have become a joke.

“How do you take the system seriously?” said Carlos Yamada, 23, who was placed on work release by the Sheriff’s Department immediately after being sentenced to 90 days in jail over his eighth arrest for driving with a suspended license. “The lesson I’ve learned every time I’ve been here is that no matter what the judge says, I can rely on the county jail system to take care of me.”

As jail overcrowding has worsened, the Sheriff’s Department has taken on a crucial role that it was never intended to hold: serving as judge and gatekeeper by determining when each convict will be back on the streets.

Horror stories abound:

A drifter attacks two men in Hollywood with a knife but is freed from jail after serving only a fraction of his sentence. Within weeks he assaults his girlfriend and allegedly embarks on a cross-county killing rampage that leaves four dead.

A convicted child molester who likes to expose himself to young girls is released from jail without posting a penny of his $500,000 bail and disappears two months before he is due back in court for sentencing. He is still on the lam.

A hot-tempered Rowland Heights man beats up his pregnant 16-year-old wife, then reportedly threatens to kill her as he is carted off to jail. Set free after five days of a 30-day sentence, he comes after her with a shotgun and makes good on his deadly promise.

For every headline-grabbing criminal, hundreds of garden variety crooks with the most direct impact on day-to-day life--burglars, wife beaters, drunk drivers, child abusers, drug dealers--also go virtually unpunished.

A three-month review by The Times found myriad ways that the system undermines efforts to protect the public:

* After closing four jails in three years, the Sheriff’s Department now has 20% fewer beds than in 1991--leaving room for 5,239 fewer inmates behind bars each night. Offenders are doing far less time than in other major metropolitan jail systems. The situation has grown so dire that Sheriff Sherman Block predicts that he may no longer have room for any inmates sentenced to county jail by the end of the year, with most jail beds filled by defendants awaiting trial for possible state prison time.

* Most defendants awaiting Municipal Court trials are released on their own recognizance and sent back on the streets--no matter what the bail set by judges. Many never show up in court to face charges. Only recently, after urging by judges, did the Sheriff’s Department amend its policy to provide that such defendants, if rearrested, be locked up pending trial.

* The jail system has taken on such an “Alice in Wonderland” quality that some judges face the specter of defense attorneys requesting jail time for their clients--instead of fines or lengthy stints on probation--because they know that the defendants will be freed without strings in short order. Some exasperated prosecutors acknowledge that they have begun seeking lengthy court continuances in order to keep certain felony defendants in jail longer while awaiting sentencing.

* Once sentenced to county jail time, most inmates--even those convicted of felonies that could land them in state prison--qualify for work release. They are assigned to job sites along freeways or in community parks and government offices and are allowed to spend their nights at home. On any given day, more convicts sentenced to jail are out among the public than are behind bars. Yet as attractive as this arrangement may seem for inmates, thousands have ditched the program.

* The early release system is rife with confusion, with many prosecutors and judges are unclear just how little time convicted inmates actually serve. The Sheriff’s Department has failed in some instances to follow its own written rules, freeing inmates who should have stayed in jail weeks more, according to department statistics.

* The sheriff’s system for tracking inmates, badly in need of upgrading, appears inadequate in providing basic management information that could help jailers determine how to keep more prisoners incarcerated. Sheriff’s officials say they have no idea whether convicts released in the last few months are already back in jail. The daily inventory log, moreover, lists more than 37,000 prisoners, but half of them are no longer in custody. The jails are regularly forced to go into a lock-down mode because prisoners are missing in the system--present, but unaccounted for.

* The new downtown Twin Towers jail, not yet open for lack of operating funds, is nonetheless draining resources from other jails. The Sheriff’s Department is spending more to finance the $20 million-plus annual debt on the vacant facility than it had cost to run an entire 2,300-bed jail closed in 1995. Even if a portion of the 4,100-bed Twin Towers opens in the next year, there is no immediate relief in sight for the public, according to Block.

The consequence of these changes, says Municipal Judge Michael S. Mink in Hollywood, is that “the price of justice just keeps getting cheaper. . . . What’s the point of giving someone 30 days in jail? It’s meaningless if they’re going to be out the door in a couple of days.”

Genesis of an Exodus

The burgeoning early release crisis has its roots in court edicts beginning in the 1970s that capped the county jail population when chronic overcrowding collided with constitutional obligations requiring humane treatment of prisoners. It is now on the brink of disaster because of the sheriff’s financially driven shutdown of the four jails and the state’s “three strikes” law, which has discouraged plea bargains and kept more high-stakes felony suspects in jail awaiting trial.

Under state law, virtually all county jail prisoners receive one day of credit for every two they serve. But in 1988, the Sheriff’s Department was given blanket authority by U.S. District Judge William P. Gray to release as many inmates as necessary to maintain limits on the jail population.

In March of that year, Block offered a solution that drew public concern but now seems laughably modest: he began trimming three additional days from each convict’s sentence.

Over the years, as the influx of prisoners has increased, the discounts have soared.

By late 1992, convicted prisoners were freed after serving only 40% of their terms. And last August, the sheriff lowered the release formula to the point that convicts now serve about 23%.

What this means is that a repeat drunk driver with a long rap sheet, sentenced to a year in County Jail, will typically spend no more than 83 days behind bars; a wife beater sentenced to six months will instead serve less than six weeks; a prostitute with a couple of prior convictions will do no more than 18 days on three months, and a defendant convicted of drawing a weapon will spend five nights in jail on a 30-day sentence.

*

Moreover, the sheriff, by fiat, has made work release an option to all but those who had been charged with assault on a peace officer, certain spousal and child abuse crimes and a handful of other exceedingly violent offenses.

In both the work release and early release programs, the sheriff makes no distinction between those convicted of relatively minor misdemeanors and felons who have received jail sentences as a condition of probation.

It has come to this because the Sheriff’s Department, citing county budget shortfalls, has not only failed to meet its targeted goals for jail expansion but has 5,000 fewer beds today than it did three years ago.

The result: more than half a million convicted criminals have been released early since the late 1980s, back on the streets long before the courts deemed proper.

Most judges and prosecutors accept Block’s word that his hands are tied by budget constraints. But many are perturbed by the results.

“It is so outrageous that we have [sheriff’s] administrators determining how much time a person will receive and what type of custody,” said Criminal Courts Supervising Superior Court Judge James A. Bascue. “I don’t believe that the public would appreciate that kind of justice.”

Revolving Jail Doors

These days, thousands of offenders in Los Angeles, as elsewhere, are no longer sentenced to jail time. With bed space costly and scarce, many everyday cases are handled with alternatives to imprisonment, including drug-abuse intervention and domestic-abuse counseling.

Moreover, due to the county’s massive size and crime rate, local authorities prosecute many crimes as misdemeanors--including assaults, burglaries and car thefts--that would be treated as felonies virtually anywhere else. This opens the door for these defendants to gentler treatment too.

“They call these petty crimes as if they’re not a problem, but it’s really this type of visible street crime that people want us to do something about,” said City Atty. James K. Hahn. “We can prosecute them, but if they don’t go to jail, it doesn’t matter.”

For the relatively few convicts who actually are remanded to County Jail, the time discounts are huge, especially compared to other large counties around the state and nation.

In Chicago and in Orange County, for instance, inmates sentenced to time in County Jail generally serve at least half their sentences behind bars. In Houston, New York City, Sacramento and San Francisco, they can usually expect to do two-thirds of their time. And in Phoenix, where the county has set up tents in the desert to accommodate the overflow jail population, sheriff’s officials say the judges’ wish is their command: Inmates serve 100% of their sentences.

Here in Los Angeles, criminals love the new math.

“Everyone knows you only do five days on 30,” said John Harwell, 30, who was arrested for allegedly assaulting a man on a Hollywood street weeks after serving less than one-third of a 180-day sentence for knocking his girlfriend unconscious in a fight at a Jack in the Box.

Harwell, a musician, insists he didn’t touch the man who was hospitalized after the latest assault. But he pleaded no contest earlier this month anyway, knowing he would be released faster than if he was incarcerated for months while awaiting trial.

Jail was “putting a damper on both my professional and personal life,” he said in explaining his plea. “I can’t afford to sit in jail.”

*

If a principal aim of the judicial system is to prevent offenders like Harwell from breaking the law again, it has largely failed.

A survey prepared by the city attorney’s office at the request of The Times show that 28% of those released early after being sentenced in late 1995 to at least 180 days--a common sentence for more serious misdemeanors--were rearrested within six months for new crimes.

In three of four of these cases, the rearrests occurred at a time when the convict would have still been in jail if not for early release.

The 250 cases tracked in the three-month review included all non-vehicular misdemeanors, such as spousal battery, drug possession, burglaries and assaults with a deadly weapon. (The city attorney’s office does not prosecute felonies.)

Deputy City Atty. Alice Hand, who conducted the research, says the numbers reflect the severity of the crisis. “The sooner they get out, the sooner the opportunity arises for additional crimes. It’s just asking for them to re-offend.”

In some cases, the crimes that follow an early release are far more serious.

The most shocking example last year was that of alleged serial killer Glen Rogers, who was sentenced to six months in jail but served only 42 days for attacking two men with a knife in a Hollywood apartment building. If there had been no jail overcrowding, Rogers would have still been confined on the date he beat his then-girlfriend (and received just two more days in jail), and when he allegedly strangled a woman he met in a Van Nuys bar. Before his arrest in November, he allegedly killed three more women in the South.

More typical is the case of Wilshire district resident Jose Marcos, 41, who got a 90-day sentence March 28 after he beat up his wife in a drunken assault, leaving her with a bruised eye, swollen lip and scratched neck.

Marcos served three weeks in jail, less than a quarter of the original sentence. A week after his release, he again confronted his wife, cutting and bruising her by punching her four times in the face.

An Invitation to Run

In the last year, with the closing of two jails containing 3,166 beds, the sheriff’s work release program has ballooned in size as officials try to push inmates out of the remaining jails more quickly.

But with thousands of additional convicts back on the streets, ostensibly working off their debt to society, the level of abuse in the work release program has spiraled out of control.

Sheriff’s officials acknowledge that nearly 30% of those freed on work release--including thieves, burglars, drug sellers and even defendants convicted of firing semiautomatic weapons at others--currently vanish. About 5,000 prisoners were on work release on one recent day--and an additional 1,700 were on the lam. The Sheriff’s Department, based on a county counsel’s opinion, has refused repeated requests from The Times for names and crimes of those who have vanished. Sheriff’s officials say the privacy rights of the wanted convicts might be violated.

Those who comply with the terms of work release spend about 20% of their sentenced days cleaning up graffiti, picking up highway litter or even washing staff cars used by top sheriffs’ officials.

Criminals who agree to participate--including felons--are often released from jail with a speed that startles judges and prosecutors.

“During the course of a day,” said Municipal Court Assistant Presiding Judge Veronica Simmons McBeth, “I sentenced a fellow to 90 days for having beaten up his spouse and I sentenced a prostitute to 45 days. That night, I got off the bench, switched into my jacket from my robe and got in my car. When I turned the corner, they were there on the corner, both of them. They had gotten processed out of the jail before I got off the bench.”

“And the woman,” McBeth added, “was dressed rather distinctively for work.”

*

The sheriff’s decision in many circumstances to ignore judge-imposed bail--a system designed to ensure that defendants return to court--has also literally opened the door for abuses. Most defendants charged with misdemeanors, including assault with a deadly weapon or child molestation, are now freed by the sheriff on their own recognizance prior to trial or sentencing--even if a judge has ordered them held in lieu of bail.

“I’ve seen cases where people pull knives on people and actually stab them . . . and I’ll set bail at $30,000 and they get released,” said Municipal Judge Frank Johnson, supervising judge at the Central Arraignment Courts. “They get home before I do. That to me is just crazy.”

On a typical day in the courthouse near downtown Los Angeles, judicial officers don’t raise an eyebrow when half of the noncustody defendants fail to show up for their court dates.

“I don’t get frustrated,” said veteran Municipal Commissioner Kirkland Nyby after a court session in which 10 of 26 defendants--facing charges including theft, prostitution and spousal battery--did not appear.

*

The no-bail release policy allows defendants to remain free even after their misdemeanor convictions as they await sentencing.

That’s what happened in the case of Marill Watson, 34, after he was convicted of child molesting last September in an incident outside a Van Nuys school.

The judge set bail at $500,000 pending sentencing, but under the sheriff’s release policy Watson was allowed out on his own recognizance because he had not attacked a police officer, beaten his wife or committed any of a handful of other crimes the sheriff has decreed “holdable.”

When the sentencing date came around, Watson simply didn’t show up.

One of the two ninth-grade victims said in an interview that she was crushed when she learned that Watson was missing.

“I think it’s a joke,” said the teenager, who testified about Watson driving up behind her and another girl, making lewd remarks and masturbating. “I was under the impression this guy was going to go to jail. He was going to get some sort of counseling and maybe he wouldn’t do this anymore.”

The girl’s father is even angrier.

“What does it take to get these people off the street?” he asked. “Does it take my daughter being murdered? I don’t know anymore.”

Confusion and Pain

Ask judges and lawyers how the sheriff determines when an inmate should be released and you’ll get mostly blank expressions and befuddled stammers.

Since mid-1988, when the sheriff began freeing misdemeanor defendants whose bail was set at $2,500, the bail release standard has fluctuated up and down at least seven times. For two years beginning in mid-1993, the Sheriff’s Department also used a complex, weighted formula to assess release dates for convicts, which took into account such factors as the seriousness of the crime and the amount of bail set.

“I’m not sure that even God understands how the release matrix [formula] works,” said Richard A. Schmidt, assistant city attorney in charge of the Van Nuys office. Tellingly, Schmidt and other prosecutors thought the sheriff was still using the matrix system months after it was abandoned.

In the last year, the formula has been simplified significantly to no longer weigh cases individually. But the department was forced to spell out its new release policies again in an April 26 memo to judges, acknowledging that “there is some continuing confusion.”

That confusion was triggered by one of the justice system’s greatest fears: a tragedy that might have been averted. This one cost a pregnant, 16-year-old and her 2-year-old cousin their lives.

Humberto Huelitl, 22, had been arrested in March for beating up his wife. He vowed to kill her when he got out of jail, relatives said, but the judge who sentenced him to 30 days for the attack said he was never told that. Huelitl was released after serving just five days and then, five days later, returned to the home with a 12-gauge shotgun, killing his wife, her young cousin, and finally himself.

So many dozens of domestic violence cases pass through Municipal Judge Dan T. Oki’s West Covina courtroom that he didn’t even recognize Huelitl’s name when he heard TV reports the night of the slayings. His bailiff called to tell him it was his case.

“It’s been my nightmare,” Oki said in an interview. “It’s the most devastating thing that’s happened to me as a judge.”

Oki said he thought Huelitl would do more than five days behind bars because domestic abusers are held to more severe sentences, but the Sheriff’s Department says he was simply wrong: While spousal battery makes a defendant ineligible for work release, officials say the department no longer differentiates by offenses in determining jail release dates; everyone is held to the same percentage.

*

In fact, though, a study of Sheriff’s Department data indicates that its release policies are not uniform.

Some spousal abusers have been allowed out of jail on work release despite the department’s ban, according to sheriff’s documents. And more than 550 inmates released last August served less than 20% of their sentences, according to sheriff’s statistics examined by The Times.

In fact, some inmates have been freed after serving less than 5% of their sentences, according to prosecutors.

In one domestic violence case heard in Van Nuys, the city attorney’s office says, a 47-year-old North Hollywood man got a 330-day sentence for violating a court order to stay away from his family and was out of jail after a week.

The Sheriff’s Department said the man was freed under the old, confusing release formula, abandoned last August. Under the new one, they say, he would have served 23% of his sentence.

Deputy City Atty. Lara Bloomquist, head of the domestic violence unit, said brief jail terms play havoc with victims. A woman who might want to leave while her husband is incarcerated “doesn’t have that much time to pull herself together,” she said.

“In the situation of a first-time spousal abuser, 20 days in jail would change a person’s head around. But if he’s booked in and essentially booked out, he doesn’t take the system seriously,” she said.

Upside-Down Justice

With jail time hardly part of the equation, some prosecutors now offer felony defendants plea bargains featuring community service rather than requesting long stays in jail because they know the offenders will soon be released with no court strings attached.

Caltrans’ roadside crews, once dominated by misdemeanor traffic violators, now include people convicted of felonies, including auto theft, burglaries, and selling limited quantities of drugs--crimes, which under state law could result in state prison sentences.

The tables have turned so far that some defendants are rejecting community service and are instead asking judges for jail time--knowing they will serve little or none.

“Here I am asking for less time, and they’re asking for more,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Norman Montrose. “The roles are reversed.”

If changes are not made, experts say, certain types of crimes could eventually go completely unpunished by time behind bars.

“It is amazing to me that the public defenders don’t walk into the lockup and say, “Everybody here, you know what you ought to do? Plead guilty. Refuse probation. Demand jail,” said Judge McBeth. “They’d get work released that very day and get out.”

As she prosecutes cases, Deputy City Atty. Felise Cohen-Kalpakian says she sometimes asks herself, “Why am I fighting, because the defendant will be leaving [out the back door] and God knows if he’ll come back again.”

*

In one of her recent cases, Stephen Premdas, a penniless 41-year-old south Los Angeles man who had allegedly threatened to kill his parents, was ordered by Municipal Judge Harold N. Crowder to post $7,500 bail. However, the Sheriff’s Department released Premdas on his own recognizance 30 minutes after the court session.

“Judges set bail but I don’t even care,” Premdas’ lawyer, Dale Michael Rubin, said afterward. “Why should I argue if the judge sets bail when I know my client is going to be out of jail anyway?”

As Cohen-Kalpakian predicted, Premdas was arrested again within days--after he returned to his mother’s home in violation of a restraining order. Sentenced to 120 days in jail in April, Premdas was back on the streets again in less than a month due to early release.

Without the threat of stiff jail terms, alternative sentencing measures--including electronic home monitoring--also have less impact.

“If they don’t do the community service, I need jail as a backup,” Judge Mink said.

To cope with the chaos, some prosecutors have come up with their own stop-gap remedies. Veteran prosecutor Montrose has negotiated so many Caltrans and graffiti removal community-service sentences for felons in the last year that court officials coined the expression “Norm’s Army,” a latter-day WPA program of sorts.

In Van Nuys, prosecutors on occasion have sought to put off sentencing dates for up to four months because they have become so frustrated with early releases on plea-bargained felony cases.

That way, “we get some [extra] time in custody” while the defendants sit in jail waiting to be sentenced, said head Deputy Dist. Atty. Herbert R. Lapin. Defendants who object, he said, can refuse a plea bargain, go to trial and risk being sentenced to state prison.

Judge Bascue has also launched an effort to stem overcrowding by bringing felony cases to trial more quickly, but many judicial officers predict it won’t make a major dent.

*

The key to easing the problem, officials say, is additional jail beds.

On the horizon looms Twin Towers, which prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys and inmates agree is the only visible solution.

But Block, of all people, throws cold water on that idea.

It would take six months to prepare the Twin Towers for occupancy even if operating funds became available, Block said. And then, he emphasized, he would initially use the ultramodern facility to relocate current prisoners “to reduce some of the dangerous overcrowding situation that exists in some of our other facilities.”

As for the net number of beds added to the jail system as soon as the $373-million complex is opened?

Zero, said Block.

Times data analyst Sandy Poindexter contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

What Six Months Gets You

Under state law, inmates customarily receive a 33% “discount” on their sentences for good behavior. But in 1988, the Sheriff’s Department began shaving additional time to comply with federal court rulings on jail overcrowding. The discounts have grown dramatically as more than 5,000 jail beds have been closed. Inmates now regularly serve an average of 23% of their sentences.

A typical inmate sentenced to six months in jail in 1988 would have served four months; today, he would serve little more than a month.

New federal caps on jail crowding result in reduced time behind bars.

Before Aug. 1988: 120 days out of 180

Aug. 1988: 91 days

Discounts on jail time continue to increase as overcrowding worsens.

Sept. 1989: 79 days

Nov. 1989: 73 days

The Hall of Justice and Mira Loma jails are closed, while the Century Regional Detention Center is opened. Jail time releases fluctuated during this period.

Oct. 1992: 68 days

Early 1995: 73 days

Biscailuz Center and Pitchess Honor Rancho jails close; the impact of the “three strikes” law escalates.

Early March 1995: 62 days

Late March 1995: 45 days

Aug. 1995 to present: 40 days

Source: Times Research based on L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Data

About This Series

The Times today presents the second of a three-part series exploring conditions at Los Angeles County’s jails:

* Sunday: Racial warfare explodes inside L.A.’s most volatile jail complex.

* Today: Convicts are back on the streets in no time--often to commit more crimes.

* Tuesday: Years on the inside breed frustration and cynicism among jailers.