Sheriff Lowers Estimate of Extra Inmate Beds Needed

In a move that could alter plans to build a controversial maximum-security jail near Irvine, Sheriff Mike Carona on Thursday lowered the projection for the number of inmate beds needed to ease overcrowding over the next decade.

In an interview with The Times, Carona said the county needs 5,100 extra beds by 2010 if it hopes to alleviate pressure on a jail system already bursting at the seams.

For some who oppose any expansion at James A. Musick Branch Jail, however, the revision offered nothing significant.

“Seven thousand, five thousand--it’s just a number,” Lake Forest Councilman Richard T. Dixon said. “We’re all getting in a numbers game here, and no one’s sitting down and thinking what these numbers mean. If [Carona] is saying, ‘Well, gee, I need 5,000 more beds,’ then we’re talking about an extremely large facility.”

The Orange County Board of Supervisors has approved building a 7,500-bed facility at Musick, which now has 1,100 beds. South County officials and residents have bitterly opposed the plan.

Carona, elected in November, ran on a platform that included opposition to expanding the site.

“I’d campaigned against putting a maximum-security prison so close to homes. I did not believe that there was a need for an additional 7,500 beds in the system,” he said. “Now I’m at the point where I can say categorically that we don’t need 7,500 beds, so I’ve lived up to my promise.”

Carona said he hopes to keep working with South County officials who are searching for an alternative site to Musick. The new numbers, he said, should please many of those officials because finding a smaller site will be easier.

Irvine Mayor Christina L. Shea, an opponent of the Musick expansion, welcomed the new projection, which she said compares favorably with the estimate by Carona’s predecessor, Brad Gates, that 7,500 to 10,000 new beds will be needed in the coming decade.

“I think for all of us, it’s a better picture,” Shea said. “It’s a smaller nut to crack, so to speak. It’s a more manageable number, but we still have to manage it.”