Work Release Is Key to Escape for Many Inmates

With 61 arrests to his name--actually, to his 10 names--John Thomas Davis is the kind of criminal most people want out of their neighborhood and behind bars.

“A threat to the community” is how a 1993 probation report described Davis and his habitual dope-dealing, addiction, thievery and other offenses. His “lengthy and significant history of criminal activities and antisocial behavior . . . speaks [for] itself.”

Not loudly enough. Five months ago, and eight more arrests after that warning, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department returned him to society--courtesy of a little-noticed but far-reaching work-release program that let him serve his sentence outside a jail cell. Not surprisingly, Davis--like so many before and after him--skipped out.

“For all these arrests and his horrible record . . . you’re telling me the Sheriff’s Department made the decision that he should go out on work release?” said an incredulous Deputy City Atty. Andrea Yee, who prosecuted the case. “It doesn’t accomplish anything.”

At a time of massive jail overcrowding, Davis’ case demonstrates the flaws in one of the Sheriff’s Department’s broadest responses: a program that in recent years has allowed tens of thousands of inmates to spend their nights at home and their days, ostensibly, at public work sites, picking up street litter, washing police cars and the like.

Documents obtained by The Times in a public records lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department reveal that the work-release program is in disarray. Often without a rudimentary examination of criminal histories, the Sheriff’s Department has routinely placed violent and repeat offenders back into the community within days of their convictions--with little more than a promise they will show up at their assigned work sites.

Once freed, documents show, vast numbers vanish.

As of Dec. 2, there were 1,915 work-release inmates listed by the sheriff as “noncompliant.” Many have long lists of prior convictions and continue to commit crimes while on the lam, according to a study by the city attorney’s office and The Times. Some 40% have been fugitives for at least a year.

Sheriff Sherman Block says this should never have happened.

Although work release offers a viable way to ease jail overcrowding, Block said, he was upset to learn after inquiries from The Times that the program has been poorly run, resulting in the release of many convicts who “never should have been let out.”

“I believed the standards [for work release] that were set several years ago were being adhered to,” Block said in an interview. “And they weren’t.”

The sheriff also insisted he was unaware that inmates were being placed on work release without a thorough check of their criminal histories--”contrary to the directive that I gave.”

The sheriff said he has now ordered tougher rules that in recent days have slowed the number of inmates being given work release. Asked who is responsible for the widespread deficiencies, Block said: “I’ll find out if I can.”

During the last few years, the work-release program has mushroomed as the county jails have become overcrowded with violent suspects awaiting trial on charges that could send them to state prison. As a result, the department says, it has been compelled to offer work release to inmates already convicted of crimes that, for the most part, are generally less serious.

“The best scenario would certainly be to have everybody in jail, but we don’t have that option,” said the sheriff’s custody chief, Barry King, who oversees work release. Despite a compliance rate of only about 65%, King said, he considers work release “more successful than a failure.”

Still, asked whether the public should be worried by the high numbers of fugitives, King said: “Certainly they’d be as concerned as I am. . . . I’m very concerned.”

So are many others, including the supervising Superior Court judge of the downtown criminal courts.

“It is clearly a public safety threat if you have someone at the control valve and their clear motivation is a question of how many inmates [can fit] in the County Jail,” Judge James A. Bascue said. “Public safety may be lost in that process.”

The judge concluded: “I don’t know what county time means anymore.”

Bascue and other judges say the state-authorized program is run so autonomously by the Sheriff’s Department that jurists often are unaware that sentences they hand down are being altered--to the benefit of convicts like David Ramirez.

A drug dealer and reputed 18th Street gang member, he was arrested in August 1995, charged with selling heroin to an undercover cop.

Within a week of being placed on work release, Ramirez participated in a beating that left a 15-year-old near death with nine stab wounds to his buttocks, lung and kidney. Ramirez, who laughed about the unprovoked attack in court, was convicted of assault and sent to state prison for six years.

As for those who bolt from the work-release program, you won’t find their photos on any wanted posters. In fact, the Sheriff’s Department and county counsel, citing privacy concerns, refused to release the identities of work-release fugitives--prompting The Times to successfully sue for the names.

Prior to the litigation, the Sheriff’s Department was taking minimal steps to return the delinquents to justice. In one month earlier this year, the sheriff had searched for only 15% of nearly 2,200 inmates missing from work release. In recent weeks, however, the department has beefed up the number of work-release deputies to 24, an increase of 33%, and has aggressively begun hunting for no-shows.

‘Flight Risks’ Often Part of Program

The Times’ study of work-release delinquents contradicts a common perception among criminal justice officials who have heard of the program: that it has been used for low-level criminal offenders who pose little danger to the community and are not prone to flee.

Public records, interviews and a computer-assisted analysis reveal that convicts placed on work release often are as violent and have criminal histories as serious as inmates behind county bars. Nearly 370 work-release fugitives of the 1,900 studied were sentenced to a full year--the longest term a judge can impose for the county lockup on a single charge.

The fugitives are a neighborhood’s nightmare.

Drug dealers, often peddling heroin or rock cocaine on street corners, are heavily represented, records show.

So too are burglars, car thieves and purse snatchers--the kind of hoodlums who have made “quality of life” a forlorn concept in some parts of Los Angeles.

Many of the delinquents have prior arrests and convictions for crimes numbering in double digits. Particularly egregious to some law enforcement officials is that the delinquency list is chock full of people whose histories should have flagged them as “flight risks.”

They include illegal immigrants who face deportation after completion of their jail sentences; apparent transients and out-of-staters; and convicts jailed because they failed to appear in court on criminal cases--a sign they are prone to flout the system.

At least one inmate was put on work release even after he was jailed for violating an earlier work-release assignment.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” said Deputy City Atty. Alice Hand, who has reviewed dozens of work-release cases in recent weeks. “A judge gives a guy jail time, and the sheriff just lets him out on work with no real criteria [to determine who gets out]. What’s the point?”

Beverly Hills attorney Christopher Weston wonders the same thing. In the summer of 1995, he was mugged while walking down a San Fernando Valley street.

Two months earlier, one of his attackers, Sunny Ray Lee, was sentenced to 210 days in County Jail for spousal abuse and reckless driving. Lee was placed on work release. He and an accomplice then went on a crime spree, robbing a floral salesman and a street-cart vendor at gunpoint and kidnapping a driver in a carjacking.

The pair then rolled Weston for his wallet while he was walking away from a Denny’s restaurant at Burbank and Lankershim boulevards.

Weston said he only lost $1 and some credit cards in the attack but was so traumatized that he bought a gun for protection. Although Weston testified at two hearings against Lee--eventually leading to a state prison term--he said no one ever mentioned that his attacker would probably have been sitting in jail had the Sheriff’s Department not given him work release.

“There is a point to putting people in jail,” Weston said. “It’s supposed to be a deterrent. And this is not acting like a deterrent. This is making a joke of the justice system. It’s a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”

M.K. El Tahir was equally incensed to hear what had become of the man who terrorized him and a store full of customers at a Long Beach mini-mart, where he works as a clerk.

El Tahir said the shirtless attacker, Michael Abasta, came into the store around midnight one summer night in 1994, wielding a knife and threatening to kill him as terrified customers ran for cover.

Abasta, 32, ultimately fled with only a 40-ounce beer. When police arrested him a short time later, an officer told El Tahir that the perpetrator would serve “two years at least.”

So when a co-worker thought he spotted the knife-wielder at the store just a few weeks ago, El Tahir said: “I told him, ‘No, no. Maybe it just looks like him, because he’s in jail.’ ”

Not quite.

Sentenced to 180 days on a probation violation stemming from the robbery, Abasta was given work release--despite a prolonged criminal history including convictions for drug use, assaulting a peace officer and drunk driving.

Sheriff’s records show that, before long, he too was among the delinquent.

A Convict’s Word Opens Door to Release

Work-release has become an integral component of the Sheriff’s Department’s strategy for coping with prisoners sentenced to the sprawling county jail system.

Since the program was enacted by state law in 1981, Los Angeles authorities have led the push in Sacramento to expand its scope. The original law limited the program to inmates with six days or less left on their sentences, a far cry from the more lenient standards being applied today. More than 25,000 inmates received work release in 1995 and the first half of this year. Most are assigned to perform nonpaying duties for the California Department of Transportation, the LAPD or the Sheriff’s Department itself.

Not all convicts qualify.

The most serious criminals--murderers, rapists and the like--are sent to state prison.

For those sentenced to County Jail, the Sheriff’s Department has a list of major crimes--including assault on a police officer, child abuse and stalking--that disqualify county inmates from work release. Generally, the department considers only the current charge in determining work-release suitability. Block says that runs counter to an order he issued requiring that past crimes be judged too.

Also barred from work release are homosexual inmates, who are segregated in the jail. Sheriff’s officials say they don’t want them at work sites with other prisoners. “There’s a potential of [their] being victimized,” custody chief King said, “and we’re not willing to take that risk.”

Homeless inmates are supposed to be disqualified as well, but sheriff’s records list 97 fugitives who were initially booked as “transients.” Department officials say they currently place no transients on work release, but “may well have done so in the past.”

The work-release exemptions change periodically. For instance, many current delinquents--nearly 200 drunk drivers alone--are missing from work release on crimes now exempted.

Unless a convict has committed one of the few exempt crimes, there’s little to stop him or her from getting work release. In a jail system that Sheriff Block calls “the largest in the Free World,” the screening of work-release candidates is surprisingly cursory.

“It seems to be that they’re just turning them out as fast as they can and not giving any consideration to factors in their criminal history,” said Deputy City Atty. Hand.

The Sheriff’s Department mostly relies on the word of an inmate about his or her past crimes and trustworthiness in determining suitability for work release. This discussion usually takes place within a couple of days after a jail sentence has been imposed. Asked whether the average convict can be expected to provide honest answers, King said: “Yeah, believe it or not, a lot of them do.”

In reality, sheriff’s officials do not know for sure because they usually do not investigate the inmates’ backgrounds.

There is no review of probation reports, King said, which are prepared to assist a judge in determining sentences. In some reviewed by The Times, inmates are quoted as saying they have lied to authorities about their names and backgrounds to avoid prosecution on outstanding warrants.

No one regularly examines arrest records either, King said, even though they are available in the department’s computer system.

Nor are court files on convicts studied, King said. Some judges suspect that no one from the Sheriff’s Department even looks at the sentences they impose.

Superior Court Judge Arthur Jean, who handles felony pleas in the Long Beach courthouse, says that when he directs his clerk to write “No Work Release” on a sentencing order, “I realize that it has no effect.”

“Sentences are imposed for reasons that for the most part are legitimate,” he said, “and when they’re not complied with, the system suffers.”

King said jailers try to follow the judges’ recommendations when possible. But he noted that a years-old federal court order makes the sheriff “the master of his own jail to decide how the jail is run.”

In Orange County, where the jails also are overcrowded, sheriff’s employees weed out serious and repeat offenders by retrieving arrest records on a widely available statewide index, said Sheriff’s Lt. Tom Garner. “Oh yeah, you bet [we check criminal histories]. We have to verify what they’re telling us. If they say, ‘I haven’t been arrested before,’ we have to check that.”

One of the things Los Angeles deputies would have found had they inspected Jose Brengos’ arrest record was this message at the top of the computerized page: “Attention: Previously deported criminal illegal alien. If in your custody, contact the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. . . . 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Instead, Brengos was put on work release earlier this year after a drug conviction--and promptly disappeared, according to the sheriff’s records.

Theoretically, illegal immigrants face deportation after completing their jail sentences. If put on work release, an undocumented inmate would have added incentive to flee.

A Times sampling of probation reports, obtained under court order, shows that the Sheriff’s Department has repeatedly given work release to probable illegal immigrants, many of whom subsequently ditched the program.

Among them are men convicted of cocaine sales, heroin possession, commercial burglary and theft. Some admitted their undocumented status to probation officers.

Patrick Michael Leiva, who has worked in Los Angeles for years as a carpet layer and factory worker, is identified in court records as an illegal immigrant from Guatemala.

Police stopped Leiva last year because of outstanding traffic warrants and found a .38-caliber pistol, which Leiva said he bought for $40 from a “hype,” a drug user. This constituted a probation violation on a past drug conviction. He was sentenced to a year in County Jail and received work release, despite his immigration status. He now is a fugitive.

King said his department does not knowingly place illegal immigrants on work release. Currently, he said, all inmates suspected of illegal status are interviewed by the INS for possible deportation after completing their jail terms.

But that hasn’t always been true, according to Richard K. Rogers, Los Angeles district director of INS.

For a period of time, Rogers said, sheriff’s officials told INS agents not to interview convicts being considered for work release.

That way, Rogers said, sheriff’s officials would “have more beds for more violent criminals.”

Block strongly denies that assertion, calling it “bull----.”

Custody officials say they wish the department had more time to evaluate arrest reports or probation reports, which often give information on a defendant’s citizenship status--and much more.

Duane Moseley’s probation report, for example, reveals that the 25-year-old Venice resident, who was convicted of selling cocaine to an undercover cop earlier this year, “has a lengthy and nonstop record of drug-related criminal behavior.”

“Nothing that law enforcement, the courts, or community supervision agencies have done has altered his behavior,” a probation officer wrote in March.

The probation officer recommended a year in County Jail for Moseley, and the judge gave it to him. Sheriff’s records show Moseley was put on work release. By July, he was gone.

Probation reports on work-release fugitives show a broad pattern of repeat offenders, many of whom have few family or community ties, spotty or nonexistent records of employment, and years of drug abuse.

The reports often speak bluntly about a convict’s threat to society.

“It is apparent that the defendant is involved in blatant narcotic sales, without regard toward the judicial system,” a probation officer wrote last year in the case of Humberto Sarias, convicted of selling cocaine downtown.

“The defendant has been untruthful each time he has been arrested. He has numerous aliases and birth dates. . . . It is recommended that a state prison sentence would make the only deterring impact on his negative behavior.”

A judge instead sent Sarias to County Jail for the maximum time allowed--one year. But he was granted work release by the sheriff and, within three months, he disappeared.

Skip-Outs Continue Their Criminal Ways

If a sentence in county custody is designed to help deter crime and safeguard the community, the numbers suggest work release has not worked.

A review of 165 recent felony and misdemeanor cases studied by The Times in conjunction with the city attorney’s office showed that one-third of the inmates who skipped out on work release were rearrested on new crimes, often within weeks or several months of their release.

The findings are buttressed by the Sheriff’s Department’s own numbers, which were detailed in a study in June on overseeing criminal offenders. The report found that 16% of the work-release inmates in one sample were rearrested within three months. “This recidivism rate could equal nearly 65%, if projected over a full year,” the study found.

“For the most part, these offenders belong in jail,” the report concluded.

Work-release fugitives have gone on to commit a wide array of new offenses, from carjackings and assault with a deadly weapon to drug dealing and thievery, records show.

Last March, Juan Ramon Perez was sentenced to one year in connection with a $56,000 burglary at a Beverly Hills jewelry shop. Placed on work release, he was picked up just weeks later for allegedly attempting to steal a woman’s purse in Hollywood.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said the jewelry dealer, Moshe Pereg, when told that Perez had been given work release. “I’m just baffled. [Convicts] laugh at us. This country is a haven for the criminals.”

Superior Court Judge Bernard Kamins, who handed down the sentence, was also annoyed to learn the case’s outcome.

“When I send someone to jail,” he said, “I expect him to go to jail. If I wanted him to have a break, to go out and work, I would have ordered it specifically myself” by giving him court-monitored community service.

Even convicts who do comply with the requirements of the work-release program can find ways to break the law.

Christina McGinnis says she was turning tricks at night on Hollywood Boulevard while working days at Caltrans as part of the work-release program.

The 23-year-old woman, jailed earlier this year on a prostitution charge, says she was grateful for the chance to keep her night job. “Some girls don’t want to do [work release], but I do,” she said one recent evening on the boulevard. “I’d rather do it than go to jail.”

John Thomas Davis, the perennial junkie with 61 arrests and at least 30 known convictions, also tried initially to ply his criminal trade to support himself while on work release. But unlike McGinnis, he got caught. Again.

To hear Davis tell it, the system practically set him up for failure.

Busted in June for drug possession, Davis jumped at the sheriff’s work-release offer. The problem, he said, was that while mopping floors for free at the Men’s Central Jail for nine hours a day, he had no time to make any money. So, he said, he resorted to selling syringes to junkies on the street.

“I was trying to get me a few dollars,” Davis said. “I didn’t mean to do harm. . . . I meant to do right. But I had to survive.”

Davis was sentenced to 90 days in jail for selling the syringes. The Sheriff’s Department apparently never realized that the 54-year-old defendant, using a different birth date, was wanted as a work-release fugitive, which would have added more time to his jail stay.

Free for a while, he is back in custody, serving time at the Peter J. Pitchess complex in Castaic. He was picked up just a few weeks ago after the Sheriff’s Department began its recent crackdown on delinquents.

This time, it appears he will not be getting out on work release.

Times director of computer analysis Richard O’Reilly, data analyst Sandra Poindexter and staff writer Dan Weikel contributed to this story.

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On the Lam

More than 1,900 criminals in Los Angeles County were fugitives as of earlier this month after they simply walked out on the Sheriff’s Department’s “work release” program, which allows convicts to complete their sentences out of jail. The Times analyzed a list of the cases, provided by the Sheriff under court order, to get a snapshot of the skip-outs.

What they did

Drug dealing and possession: 37.6%

Property crimes and fraud: 23.7%

DUI and vehicle violations: 19.7%

Public nuisance, vice and miscellaneous: 12.0%

Crimes of violence or guns: 6.9%

****

Repeat offenders

A review of 165 felony and misdemeanor cases, analyzed by The Times in conjunction with the City Attorney’s office, shows extensive criminal histories among many skip-outs.

* 80% of the inmates had been arrested at least once before, many of them habitual offenders who had been in and out of jailed repeatedly in recent years.

* 17% of the skip-outs were jailed on the charge of violating their probation--a telling sign say law enforcement officials, that they may not stay straight on the outside.

* 32% of the inmates were rearrested on new crimes after skipping out on the work-release program, with some sent to state prison for far more serious offenses.

Source: Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, Los Angeles Times