Grand Jury Says Musick Expansion Not Needed

In another setback for a proposal to expand James A. Musick Branch Jail, a grand jury report released Tuesday offered alternatives to ease overcrowding at the county’s jails and warned that expansion costs could strain the county’s budget.

The panel spent eight months studying the county’s jail situation before concluding in its report that “evidence does not present a clear and convincing need” for doubling capacity across the county or changing the James A. Musick Branch Jail from a minimum-security facility to a maximum-security one. The jail is in an unincorporated area bordering Irvine and Lake Forest.

The report provides grist for opponents of the expansion efforts, especially because it comes on the heels of a judge’s ruling that an environmental impact report prepared for Musick’s reconstruction was flawed.

“This goes a long way in validating what we have been saying all along,” said Lake Forest Mayor Richard T. Dixon. “I hope the Board of Supervisors supervise, and take it and rely on it for making sound decisions in the future with regard to jail expansion.”

County supervisors do not have to follow the grand jury’s recommendations. Board Chairman William G. Steiner said the report is “important input” but that the decision to expand Musick has been made.

“We can’t build our way out of the jail crisis,” Steiner said. “But by the same token, it’s documented that we have one of the most overcrowded jail systems in the country. We have to expand jail-bed capacity, including at the James Musick facility.”

Sheriff Brad Gates has proposed adding more than 7,000 jail beds to the county system, including expansions at Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange and Musick, which is near a residential neighborhood. Plans to add 400 beds at Theo Lacy already have been finalized, but authorities do not have the money yet to do the work.

Meanwhile, county officials have been battling community opposition to the Musick proposal, which would increase the number of beds there to 7,104 from 1,256.

In arguing for the expansion, the Sheriff’s Department prepared a report showing that in 1995, 40,000 people were cited, released or had their sentences reduced because of jail crowding in the county. Of those, 882 committed new crimes during the time they would have been in jail. In the last five years, more than 3,800 arrests involved people who were supposed to be behind bars at the time, officials said.

“No one knows how many crimes each of them committed before being rearrested, but even in the unlikely scenario in which they only committed one offense before being taken back into custody, what a terrible price our citizens have had to pay for lack of adequate jail beds,” Sheriff’s Department officials said in a prepared statement.

But the grand jury noted Tuesday that more than 70% of the early releases in 1996 and 1997 were for five days or less. Furthermore, the practice of citing and releasing people without a warrant is largely driven by the California Penal Code and not a shortage of jail beds, according to the report.

The grand jury recommended that the county curb jail crowding by expediting transfer of inmates to state prisons and making more use of city jails. The report also recommended more punishments that do not require jail space, such as home detention by electronic monitors, work furlough and work programs.

“I agree that we need to look at alternatives to incarcerations,” Steiner said. “But we don’t have control over some variables that are being proposed, such as the transfer of inmates to state prisons. . . . With the county’s urban problems and crime rate, we’re going to need more beds. It’s that simple.”