New Sheriff’s Jail Priority : Carona Can Massage Good Ideas to Ease Crowding

Sheriff-elect Mike Carona has put Orange County’s jail overcrowding problem suitably high on his list of issues to tackle when he takes office next January. It would be good if he has better luck devising a solution than the sheriff he will replace, Brad Gates.

It has been 20 years since a federal judge ordered the county to improve conditions in the main jail. Seven years later, when conditions had worsened rather than improved, the judge found Gates and the supervisors in contempt of court. The ruling had the beneficial effect of getting county officials’ attention.

The judge fined the county $50,000 and saw to it that the money was put to good use: the hiring of an expert on jail conditions who advised the county on how to shape up.

Unfortunately for Gates and Carona, the fixes have been small and incremental. The quickest fix, a new jail, was never made. Given the opposition to new jails wherever they are proposed, it’s unclear if a new jail ever will be built in the county.

But the problem of too many inmates and too few beds has not gone away. That means all sorts of possible solutions should be explored. And that is what Carona has promised.

The sheriff-elect has been Orange County marshal for 10 years. As such he has been responsible for courthouse security, including guarding prisoners while they are in the various court buildings. One of his suggestions for getting more jail beds is to put inmates charged with drug- or alcohol-related crimes in a separate, locked facility and treat them for their addictions. That’s a plan worth serious consideration.

Carona says someone who has been arrested a dozen times on drug charges may not be a hardened criminal but someone with a drug problem. The new sheriff understands the need for careful screening and for keeping in jail those who belong there.

But a separate facility for addicts would have sheriff’s deputies standing guard, to make sure those sentenced to the building stay there. The recovery program would be run by experts responsible to another county agency, perhaps social services or health care.

Judges would have to decide who might be a good candidate for the new facility, and a number of judges over the years have expressed support for such a program.

Judges also have been a key source of support for the county’s drug court, in which those accused of minor, nonviolent crimes essentially are given probation so long as they get treatment for their drug problem. The Probation Department and Health Care Agency oversee the offenders and the district attorney’s and public defender’s offices also cooperate. Drug courts have become popular in several locations across the country. The Orange County Board of Supervisors several weeks ago added four deputy probation officer positions to expand the program.

Probation Department officials say only three of their first 53 graduates got in trouble with the law after completing the yearlong program of counseling and frequent meetings with law enforcement officials and judges who monitored their progress.

An individual who is assigned to drug court can retain his or her job while taking part in the program. That’s not true for someone in a locked facility of the kind Carona contemplates. Besides counseling and anti-drug seminars, help in finding a job afterward would be required. But breaking the cycle of addiction, crime and jail would help the criminal, assist in keeping families together and be cheaper for society than building and operating new jails.

As it is, the county is short of jail space. Gates for years has released inmates before they completed their sentences to make room for new inmates accused of more serious crimes. That has upset judges, who want criminals to serve the time they impose. It has bothered Gates, who has appealed to the supervisors for more jails or an expansion of existing facilities--the main jail in Santa Ana and the branch jails in Orange and Lake Forest.

Carona has promised to update the document that helps the county estimate how many jail beds it needs, based on population, crime trends and other factors. When first prepared in the 1980s, the document estimated a need for 7,000 jail beds by 2000.

The sheriff-elect will find the jail problem could be one of his toughest, requiring help from the supervisors in determining if a new facility will be built and where and requiring money to operate existing jails as well as possibly building new ones.