Courting Disaster

Eighty-eight inmates were crammed into holding cells at South Orange County Municipal Court here Wednesday. At one point, 53 of them had one toilet to share. Dozens sat or sprawled on a cold, dirty floor awaiting their court appearances. Others sat handcuffed to chairs in the hallway.

“There’s no breathing room,” said Lt. Scott Bowen of the Orange County Marshal’s Department. “It’s a real tight fit.”

Welcome to a typical day of inmate overcrowding here.

Even though the number was still five shy of the jail’s maximum capacity, the cells are usually jammed because authorities must separate inmates to defuse gang and racial tensions. So the numbers aren’t evenly distributed among the three different-sized cells.

Further, crowding in the cells makes it necessary to keep some inmates waiting in the courtrooms, where they sometimes interrupt court proceedings. Defendants and witnesses who are also co-defendants often are kept in the same cell.

“We’re just drowning,” said Judge Pamela Iles, boxes of case files on her desk. “We are inundated down here on a continual basis, and it’s not getting any better.”

County officials are aware of the chronic problem and four years ago took measures to build more holding space at the court. The county’s bankruptcy delayed those plans, but now there’s a glimmer of hope again.

Officials are talking to an architect about knocking down a wall that leads to a storage room and using the space to build three additional cells--room for about 25 more inmates, Bowen said. If all goes well, ground could be broken in three to six months. There is no cost estimate for now.

“This is the Band-Aid approach,” Bowen said. “But we’re in desperate need of space.”

Meanwhile, county supervisors also are concentrating on long-term plans to build a new courthouse that would not only remedy the jail problem but provide more court space as well.

“The court facility has not kept up with the growth in South County,” Supervisor Todd Spitzer said. “The courthouse is having difficult times performing its function. And its holding facility is not designed for the demand that it presently faces.”

Spitzer said he and Supervisor Tom Wilson will recommend to the full Board of Supervisors within the next 10 days that the new courthouse be made a top priority.

“The size of that facility for the amount of work they have is not conducive to managing the caseload,” Wilson said. “A new courthouse at this time is necessary.”

Public Defender Mary Buchanan struggled to talk to her client Wednesday through a 2-inch-by-6-inch slit in the plexiglass that covers the bars of the courthouse jail cells. The inmate cupped his ear and leaned against the bars.

“I can’t hear you,” he said.

“You have no privacy,” said Lisa Harbilas, the alternate public defender who was helping advise the inmate. “Everyone chimes in, ‘Take the deal, don’t take the deal.’ It’s a difficult way to practice.”

If the situation does not improve, Bowen said, sheriff’s deputies may have to send the inmates in shifts from the County Jail in Santa Ana, where they are housed.

“If we continue to have days like today, we are going to have to find alternate ways to house them,” he said. “I just don’t have enough cells.”