Jail Crowding Forces Issue of Building More Facilities

Suitable for inclusion in the department of dubious distinctions: Orange County’s listing as the most overcrowded jail system in the nation.

Sheriff Brad Gates broke the news a week and a half ago, saying that new data from the U.S. Bureau of Judicial Statistics found that the county’s four adult detention facilities are running nearly 40% above capacity. That’s the worst overcrowding of the nation’s 15 largest counties, including Los Angeles.

Though the extent of the overcrowding may be surprising, the fact that the county has too few jail cells should not have been an eye-opener.

For two decades, the county has been under federal court orders to end overcrowding in the jails. Residents have steadfastly refused to let new jails be built in their neighborhoods; where jails already exist, neighbors have fought their expansion.

The county supervisors have been aware of the problem, but unable to do much about it. No supervisor has supported a new jail in his district; an attempt to site one not far from the Anaheim border in Gypsum Canyon was defeated six years ago when voters overwhelmingly refused to approve a half-cent sales tax increase to finance the 6,700-bed facility.

That there is any good news at all on the jail front is a credit to officials in the county and the city of Orange several years ago. But even that agreement to expand the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange came about only as part of a settlement of a lawsuit, filed by Orange against the county on the grounds that the original expansion plans were far too ambitious.

Gates’ announcement of the extent of the overcrowding problem was accompanied with the news that the supervisors have approved plans to add 384 new maximum-security jail beds at Lacy.

That is welcome progress. Sheriff’s Department officials said that because of overcrowding, last year they released 32,000 inmates who had not served their full sentences. Of those released early, more than 700 committed additional crimes while they would have been behind bars had there been space for them. The additional jail beds are sorely needed.

The county planned for a 1,600-bed expansion of the Lacy jail, but had to hold off after declaring bankruptcy in December 1994. That also seriously damaged the county’s credit rating, which has yet to recover fully. County officials were right not to sell bonds to try to add more beds at Lacy, but instead to use proceeds from a statewide sales tax increase earmarked for public safety measures.

Because of the bad credit rating, bonds would cost the county more than it should spend. Revenue from Proposition 172, the statewide tax measure to benefit law enforcement, has been increasing, which will allow planning for the Lacy expansion to continue.

There is still an immense gap between the number of jail beds required by the county and the number it actually has. The county hopes to begin construction of the Lacy expansion next year and eventually to find the money to build all 1,600 beds planned in the expansion and to operate that large a jail. But even then, the county estimates it will need 5,000 new jail beds in the next 10 years.

Orange County residents have to realize that something has to give: Either inmates keep going free early, or more jails are built, with taxpayers providing the revenue to construct and operate them.

It serves no purpose to preach a tough law-and-order line, and have the police, judges and jurors do their jobs, then turn inmates free well short of their full terms because a jail bed is needed for an even more dangerous inmate. That sort of situation breeds contempt for the justice system, which is a phenomenon too dangerous to accept.