New Ideas on Jail Size : Grand jury contradicts Gates on need for expansion

Orange County long has been short of jail space and has operated under a federal judge’s order that it not put too many inmates in too few cells.

Sheriff Brad Gates repeatedly has argued for solutions that included transforming the James A. Musick branch jail, situated between Irvine and Lake Forest, from its minimum-security rating to maximum security. The sheriff also has proposed increasing the inmate count at Musick from 1,256 to more than 7,000.

Now comes the Orange County Grand Jury, in sharp disagreement with Gates.

The grand jury issued a report last month contending that the “evidence does not present a clear and convincing need” for upgrading Musick to maximum security or for doubling the number of beds in the county’s jails.

Grand jury reports always are open to debate, but also always deserve serious consideration. Grand jurors study all sides of an issue; their look at the status of the jails consumed eight months. The conclusions cannot be treated lightly.

One area where the panel hit the mark was the need for more alternative sentencing.

Some people convicted of relatively minor crimes could be confined to their homes, wearing electronic bracelets on wrists or ankles that would let Probation Department officials know if they left home without permission.

Others could be freed to work during the day, but confined in their own homes at night. Another category of convicts could be confined to a halfway house rather than a jail cell. That would cost the county less money.

Such out-of-jail programs often are suitable for low-level drug offenders, caught possessing small amounts of cocaine or other drugs. When also required to enter a drug treatment program, first offenders have a chance to make the brush with the law their last.

The grand jury also elaborated on Gates’ reports that because of a lack of beds he is forced to release many inmates before they finish serving their sentences. The panel said that more than 70% of the early releases in 1996 and 1997 were five days or less.

The grand jury suggested that to make more space, inmates be sent more quickly to state prisons. That is a good goal, but given the variables of state schedules and transportation logistics, it is not always attainable.

Still, Gates and others are correct in arguing that the county does need more jail beds, including ones for maximum security.

The Theo Lacy branch jail in Orange is scheduled to expand to hold another 400 inmates. While supervisors have approved those plans, they have not yet come up with funds for the bricks and mortar. Nor have they found money to operate an expanded Lacy jail. The supervisors are wise not to rush ahead. In Los Angeles, a new jail was unused for months because there was not enough money to run it.

Despite Orange County’s reputation as a location where law and order rule, the push for new jails has never been popular.

Four years ago the county grand jury predicted that voters would approve higher taxes or bond measures for new jails because of an increasing fear of crime. It did not happen.

In recent years crime rates have dropped in most areas of the county. The fear of crime may not have dropped to the same extent as the crime rate, but there has been no grass-roots push for more jail beds.

Instead, there has been a growing consensus that expanding Musick as much as Gates proposed is politically unfeasible. It is true that people who moved to the area knew there was a jail there. But expanding the number of prisoners sevenfold and converting it to maximum security would mean a different kind of jail from a minimum-security lockup.

Supervisor William G. Steiner, who approved planning for a larger Musick jail, also rightly suggested that the maximum number of beds would be better set at 4,500 than 7,500.

Both candidates to succeed Gates in next month’s election have opposed building massive jails. They will need to work with the supervisors to figure out how to solve the jail overcrowding problem. Inmates should not be freed before serving their time simply because there are too few detention facilities, even if the cut in jail time is only a few days.

The grand jury has provided valuable suggestions on possible methods to ease the county’s problem. Now it’s up to the sheriff and the supervisors to see which proposals are feasible and face the more difficult problem of finding money to implement them.