Overcrowded, Inefficient Jails a Top L.A. County Problem

No one--not prosecutors, judges, sheriff’s officials or criminals--denies anymore that the Los Angeles County jail system, the nation’s largest, has become an embarrassment. Because of massive overcrowding in recent years, fewer than 25% of prisoners serve out their sentences before being released, a record low; on average, prisoners serve roughly half the time they would have four years ago. And nearly one in four of those who are let go early commit new offenses within months of leaving jail, according to a survey conducted by The Times and the city attorney’s office.

As one judge said in a current Times series on the jails crisis: “I’ve seen cases where people actually pull knives on people and actually stab them.J.J.J. I’ll set bail at $30,000 and they get released.”

One step toward a solution needs to be embraced immediately. Since the county completed a state-of-the-art downtown L.A. jail called Twin Towers last summer, the $373-million facility has been sitting empty. Because of bureaucratic bickering, not a penny of the estimated $100 million needed annually to operate the place has been allocated. County officials accuse Sacramento of hoarding $1 billion in local property tax revenues over the last few years. State officials, in turn, complain that federal authorities have dried up funds by failing to reimburse the county $50 million to $70 million annually for jailing illegal immigrants. In fact, both the county and the state need to accept a share of the blame.

At the county level, the Sheriff’s Department has closed several jails in recent years, reducing capacity by 5,000 inmates. One might assume these were decrepit, dangerous facilities, but that was not the case; Sheriff Sherman Block simply made what turned out to be an ill-timed decision to shift members of his force from jail operation to patrol cars.

Compounding the problem is the department’s so-called work release program. Under that program, sheriff’s officials now concede, nearly 30% of those freed to live at home and work on county jobs during the day simply vanish. What’s most problematic is that the Sheriff’s Department, which is responsible for determining which prisoners will be released early, has no organized system for doing so. Thus convicted murderers may be in those orange-clad Caltrans crews you see by the roadsides. An assistant city attorney told a Times reporter, “I’m not sure even God understands how the release matrix [formula] works.”

As for Sacramento, officials should open up the coffers--newly replenished by the rebounding economy--to aid the county in its crisis, and legislators should introduce bond measures to generate additional funding for jails.

Cynical politicians might think that voters would say no to any kind of tax, but the electorate in fact approved jail bond measures in 1986 and 1988. Reform is also needed in Proposition 172, which has essentially left county officials unable to allocate needed money to jails. Most damaging of all, of course, has been Proposition 13, which requires that a daunting two-thirds of California voters approve any tax revenue increase.

L.A. County’s embattled jails require not only the support of state and county officials; their entire operations need rethinking. As the Times’ series shows, many jails are now essentially run by gang leaders, known as “shot callers,” who have become masterful at fomenting racial tensions. The county needs to study innovative criminal justice programs elsewhere that have eased tensions. For instance, Michigan has addressed jail overcrowding by sending many criminals to Huron House, which operates an “alternative sentencing program” that combines job training with tough supervision.

Unless our county jails are reformed, and unless the state and the county learn how to work together, the jailhouse gang leaders will be calling even more shots in the future. And they will be calling them for more criminals than ever. For with word on the street that now only 83 days of a full year’s sentence are likely to be served, deterrence of crime in Los Angeles County becomes weaker by the day.