Just How Do They Define ‘Trust’?

Spokespersons for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department used the term “trusty” to describe the status of a convicted serial rapist who attempted to escape from the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic. In prison parlance, that means a dependable and trustworthy inmate who has earned special privileges.

So how could anyone declare trustworthy a convicted serial rapist who assaulted one of his victims in front of her own daughter? What thinking would allow such an inmate any special privilege?

Department officials now claim they made a mistake. They say they just used the wrong word to describe Pedro Carvajal, rapist of three women. He was simply one of many “inmate workers,” none of whom have special privileges, department spokesmen said.

That might have been an acceptable reversal of terms, but only if the Sheriff’s Department’s record had been largely unblemished. It hasn’t been.

Over the past year, it’s been disclosed that the jail system released a number of inmates by accident, in part because of a labyrinthine paperwork problem. Also, the jail system’s work release program was so poorly run that many inmates who were allowed to participate simply skipped out and became fugitives.

Tightening up the work release program has now led, in part, to jail overcrowding so acute that the Sheriff’s Department risks being hauled into court again to answer complaints of excessive jail populations. Orange County jails face a similar problem with overcrowding.

Here in L.A. County, the many problems of our sheriff also include keeping inmates incarcerated beyond their scheduled release dates. There’s more, of course, but you get the drift.

Certainly the department’s explanations of who gets to be an inmate worker, and why, are not reassuring. According to the Sheriff’s Department, the criminal record of an inmate is considered less important than his behavior inside the jails. Who doesn’t get to be an inmate worker? Terrorists, child molesters (for their own protection), those who have escaped or have attempted an escape and those who have exhibited assaultive behavior inside the jail.

Los Angeles sheriff’s officials say that they have launched an investigation of the Carvajal incident. Certainly any inquiry should extensively cover the process for deciding who gets to hold down a jail job and who ought to be largely confined to a cell. Carvajal was one of the latter.