Sheriff-Elect Proposes Renting Out Beds to Fund Expansion of Jail

Orange County’s future sheriff proposes to speed the expansion of Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange and to rent its beds to out-of-town agencies, a plan he says will pay for itself. Sheriff-elect Mike Carona, who will take office in January, said in an interview Saturday that his proposal to build all the approximately 1,000 planned beds now and to import prisoners to fill it would solve the county’s problem of how to finance the expansion. It also would ultimately help solve the county’s own chronic jail overcrowding problem.

“It allows us to build the facility in 1998 and 1999 dollars and pay the actual cost of the facility with someone else’s money,” he said. “When we need it, we can move into it.”

The expansion would provide many more beds than Orange County needs now, solving its initial overcrowding problem and providing for future needs, Carona said.

Carona said his plan is in the preliminary stages and would require approval by the Board of Supervisors. It also could be tricky politically.

“The downside politically is that you’re talking about importing prisoners,” Carona acknowledged. “You would have to set up a series of protocols. We’d want to make sure [prisoners] are returned to whoever gave them to us. We’re not going to release them wholesale into Orange County.”

The Board of Supervisors has approved a 1,000-bed expansion of Theo Lacy, and the city of Orange has agreed to it. But no timetable has been set, and the county is still trying to come up with the money to build it all. Construction on an initial 384-bed addition began earlier this year and will cost about $22 million.

At the same time, the county continues to grapple with chronic jail overcrowding, which resulted in the early release of 32,000 inmates in 1996. Carona said he estimates that the county’s jail system is 50 to 150 beds short each day.

As the county’s population continues to grow and more space at Theo Lacy is need for its own prisoners, Carona said, the Sheriff’s Department would begin phasing out the contracts with other agencies.

“By 2010 or 2015, then it’s just a turnkey operation and we say, ‘We need this space,’ ” he said.

Carona said his proposal is merely a large-scale version of what some cities in Orange County already are doing.

“Right now, Santa Ana is doing it with their new jail, Anaheim is doing it, and Seal Beach is doing it,” he said. “A lot of local jails are doing it. But I don’t know that it’s ever been done with the magnitude that we are putting on the table.”

Even Carona’s bitter rival in the June election for sheriff, Santa Ana Police Chief Paul M. Walters, whose city rents 350 of 480 beds to outside agencies, applauded the idea.

Santa Ana rents beds to a variety of federal agencies, including the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and U.S. Customs Service, who collectively pay for the entire $8-million jail operation, Walters said.

“Our whole jail operation doesn’t cost the city anything, and last year [revenue] exceeded our budget by half a million,” he said.

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The number of beds Santa Ana has needed for its own inmates has dropped by 25% in recent years, accompanying a 50% drop in serious crime, Walters said. Federal agencies, however, have more prisoners than they can house.

Walters said he fears no competition from the county on that score.

“Absolutely, there are plenty to go around,” he said. “If you have the space, the feds have the prisoners.”

In particular, an accelerated rate of deportations and required hearings has made the INS one of Santa Ana’s best customers. The jail houses only inmates who are awaiting sentencing. Most of the inmates face trials in Orange County, Walters said, but not all.

Santa Ana also rents 64 cells to the county for $1.74 million annually to house juveniles being tried as adults or who have turned 18 while in custody.

Carona said the Sheriff’s Department could rent Theo Lacy beds to the federal government, state prisons or adjoining counties for minimum- or maximum-security prisoners.

Orange Mayor Joanne Coontz was surprised by Carona’s idea and said that she believed all details about the jail had been agreed upon and concluded.

“This is certainly something I’d like a lot more information about,” Coontz said. “This process has taken a long time--through the [administrations] of two mayors--and it’s something the community is deeply concerned about.”

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Carona said his idea doesn’t change any of the decisions that already have been made about the jail.

“I’m not talking about decreasing or increasing the number of beds,” he said.

The proposal, he said, “may turn out to be an exceptionally positive idea but something politically that doesn’t pencil out. But I think the public deserves to have open debate on issues that impact the criminal justice system, and jail overcrowding is one of them.”

Because of the overcrowding problem, Sheriff Brad Gates also wants to expand the James A. Musick Branch Jail in Irvine and convert it to a maximum-security facility. But funds are lacking for that project as well, and Carona, two supervisors and neighbors strongly oppose the plan.

Nevertheless, a three-member majority of the Board of Supervisors in May voted to move forward with a revised environmental impact for a 7,500-bed expansion and conversion of Musick to maximum security.

Another partial solution to overcrowding, Carona said Saturday, would be to change the way prisoners are classified. Currently, he said, many are classified as maximum-security risks not because they are dangerous but because they have numerous minor offenses. Since they cannot, with that classification, be housed in minimum-security facilities, some of those beds go unused, while maximum-security facilities become overcrowded.

“Say someone, because of a history of drug offenses, is classified as maximum,” Carona said. “The actual crime they’ve committed is not worse than ones they’ve committed before,” but currently they must be housed in a maximum-security facility.

Carona also has long advocated joining with private industry to build a jail solely for drug and alcohol offenders, who he said account for about 20% of the county’s jail population. He said the jail would include a behavior modification program that does not exist in other county jails and would be built on a 20- to 40-acre site yet to be determined.

“It would teach [inmates] how to get off dope and alcohol,” he said. “We stop the revolving door.”