Baca Opens Center for Drug Users

Making good on a promise that some critics thought was far-fetched, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca on Thursday officially opened the Biscailuz Recovery Center--an old jail the sheriff has turned into a state-of-the-art drug and alcohol treatment facility for dozens of inmates.

Presiding over the opening ceremony, Baca told about 200 dignitaries and department members that he wants to help the county’s sentenced drug offenders--caught in the downward spiral of addiction--to turn their lives around.

“We need to do something to get into their minds and souls,” Baca said of the inmates now enrolled in the Biscailuz program. “Our goal is to ensure these people never return to jail. . . . Is that not a proper and noble goal?”

About 85 inmates, including actor Robert Downey Jr., convicted on drug charges, are now undergoing treatment at Biscailuz. Several of the county officials who attended the event said they were surprised that Baca, who took office eight months ago, was able to open the facility so quickly.

“I listened with great interest to Sheriff Baca’s agenda once he took office,” said Public Defender Michael Judge. “I became concerned that he was trying to take on too much. . . . It’s unbelievable he got this done. What this is is a triumph of the will to do the right thing.”

Pleading his case to the county, Baca obtained about $3 million from the Board of Supervisors this year to operate the jail, which was shut down in 1995 because of a lack of funds.

Baca figured that the old facility in East Los Angeles would be the perfect place to house inmates in the county’s Sentenced Drug Offender Court, an intense 15-month rehabilitation program aimed at helping drug users beat their addictions and at curbing California’s exploding prison population.

As part of the program, which was started five years ago, defendants must plead guilty to their drug offense and agree to participate in a rigorous regimen that includes drug testing and intensive counseling.

The addicts are sentenced to a 90-day treatment program in the county jail system and then placed in a monitored facility in the community.

The Sheriff’s Department had previously set aside 41 beds at the Century Regional Detention Center for inmates in the program. Those inmates were transferred to Biscailuz several weeks ago to join others recently accepted into the program.

The center will be run by personnel from the Sheriff’s Department, the Impact Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center and the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District’s correctional education division.

In addition to providing help to drug and alcohol abusers, sheriff’s officials are offering anger management and self-esteem classes to inmates convicted of domestic abuse. About 25 inmates have enrolled in that program at the reopened jail, which was freshly painted, carpeted and landscaped.

Eventually, Baca hopes to house 900 offenders at the facility. In addition to inmates in the drug court program, the department has offered to house 300 state inmates who must undergo drug and alcohol rehabilitation before being released from prison.

“This is a first-class operation,” Superior Court Judge Michael A. Tynan told the crowd at the dedication. “These people have been swept under the carpet for much too long.” The center, he said, “is an indication of [Baca’s] decency.”