Prop. 205 on Jail Improvements

* Re “Bond Issue Worth Supporting: Prop 205,” on jail improvements, editorial, Oct. 8:

Funding the construction, renovation, remodeling and replace- ment of local juvenile and adult facilities should most certainly be of great concern to us all.

Today’s public schools have little, if any, of the luxuries the prisons have. Why not have a statewide garage sale to raise funds for the prisons. Sell their air-conditioning systems, their athletic equipment, their color televisions to raise money to build new facilities. Or better still, send all the equipment along with the air-conditioning systems to the public schools.

RONN YABLUN

Calabasas

* Current jail capacity statewide is 61,728. At the end of June 1996, the average daily population (ADP) of California’s jails was 71,291. Some might say, “Not bad; that’s only 114% of capacity.”

This is a little misleading: The ADP has remained fairly steady at nearly 70,000-plus for the past several years because of capacity constraints, not lack of demand. More than 1.2 million people are booked into our jails each year. That’s almost 20 for each available bed, but they can’t all stay.

Today, 23 counties (representing 78% of the statewide ADP) are forced to operate under court-imposed caps on their jail populations. That means more than 20,000 inmates are released early each month due to a lack of bed space (more than 186,000 so far this year), and nearly 3 million warrants are currently going unserved because there aren’t enough jail cells in existence to handle all the inmates who need to be in custody.

JOE SANDOVAL, Chairman

California Board of Corrections

Sacramento