Counties May Team Up on Detention Center

In an unusual bid to find more jail space, Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona said Friday that he is developing a plan in conjunction with Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca to send some inmates 100 miles away to a private detention center being built in Kern County.

Carona said he is hoping to hold 250 to 350 of the county’s 5,000 inmates at the center, which is the first major privately financed prison in California.

The county is under a court order to ease crowding in its jail system, which is one of the most overcrowded in the nation. The proposal comes as the county is trying to find a location somewhere in the south Orange County to build a maximum security jail.

Carona said that search is continuing but that using the private prison could ease the space crunch. “This is just one more piece of the puzzle to solve the jail overcrowding problem,” he said.

But critics are already expressing concerns about the idea, saying that it would separate inmates from their families.

The Kern County facility is being built by Corrections Corp. of America, the largest of a growing number of companies that are mixing prisons with profit. Carona acknowledged that he received financial backing from a consultant for the company during last year’s election but said he does not see it as a conflict of interest.

The facility will be run by the Kern County Sheriff’s Department, getting around a state law that prohibits private companies from overseeing county inmates.

Company officials said Los Angeles, Kern and Orange counties are the only counties considering use of the facility.