Sheriff Eyes Plan to Send Inmates to Kern

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

Carona said he is hoping to hold at least 250 to 350 of the county’s 5,300 inmates in California City at the state’s first major privately financed prison. Orange County’s jail system is one of the most overcrowded in the nation and is under a court order to ease the space crunch.

The plan, still in its early stages, comes as officials are trying to find a location somewhere in South County to build a new maximum-security jail. Carona said that using the private prison could help lessen the problem.

“This is just one more piece of the puzzle to solve the jail overcrowding problem,” he said.

The Kern County lockup is being built by Corrections Corp. of America, the largest of a growing number of companies that are mixing prisons with profit. Carona toured the site in mid-April and has held discussions with the sheriffs of Kern and Los Angeles counties to draw up plans for collaboration.

But critics are expressing concerns about the idea, noting that it would separate inmates from their families. Transporting inmates such a distance also raises logistical questions.

Carona acknowledged that he received financial and political backing during last year’s election campaign from a consultant to the prison company: William Buck Johns, the veteran Republican activist.

Johns owns Corrections Facility Development Inc., which provided consulting services on the California City prison project. But, Carona said, the relationship should not pose a political problem.

“Is there a conflict of interest? I don’t think so because if this ever comes to fruition, it will be a decision for the Board of Supervisors, not Mike Carona,” he said.

Under the plan, the Kern County Sheriff’s Department would lease a portion of the facility and manage inmates from Los Angeles and Orange counties, thus getting around a state law that prohibits private companies from overseeing county inmates.

So far, company officials said, the 2,304-bed prison has no contracts to house inmates but has received plenty of interest from public agencies. Los Angeles, Kern and Orange, however, are the only counties considering its use, said David Myers, president of the firm’s Western operations.

Should the plans win county approval, the inmates most likely to be sent to Kern County would be the 250 to 350 inmates awaiting a bed each day at a state prison, Carona said.

But Carona said he would agree to the plan only if it’s cheaper than keeping the inmates in Orange County. Those costs range from about $30 a day at James A. Musick Branch Jail to $61 at the Intake/Release Center in Santa Ana.

Sending such a small portion of inmates is unlikely to solve the enormous problem facing the county’s jails.

Carona has said he needs to find 5,100 new beds within a decade to ease overcrowding and comply with the federal court order that has hung over his department for more than two decades.

Success of the proposal, however, could lead to more inmates being farmed out if it’s legally possible.

Sending inmates far from their homes and families, however, puts unfair hardship on them and increases the likelihood of their falling back into crime, said Kara Gotsch of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“By severing them from their families and their communities, we are making it very difficult for them to rehabilitate when they go back to their community,” said Gotsch, public policy coordinator for the ACLU’s National Prison Project.

But Carona said he is looking at ways to ensure that inmates sent away can still receive regular visits. One solution, he said, might include videoconferencing with relatives.

“Through a video hookup they [can] talk back and forth to their loved ones,” Carona said. “Is that any different from sitting across from a glass partition? I don’t think so.”

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Private Prison

In a bid to reduce overcrowding, Sheriff Mike Carona is exploring the idea of housing 250 to 350 Orange County jail inmates at a private prison being built in Kern County