Jails Jammed Again as O.C. Halts Early Outs

The number of convicted criminals winning early releases from Orange County jails has plunged to the lowest level in 15 years, leaving the overcrowded facilities more packed than ever.

The Sheriff’s Department has virtually halted the release of inmates with more than three days of their jail terms unserved, sending home 78 such prisoners since January compared to 5,845 during all of last year.

Officials said the decrease was made possible by squeezing about 200 more inmates a day into previously underused cells and expanding the use of supervised work programs for nonviolent offenders.

The reductions mark a dramatic turnaround for the county’s beleaguered jail system, which for years freed thousands of burglars, gang members and other criminals--sometimes weeks before their sentences were up.

The practice has long generated criticism because officials estimate that 10% of those who won early release ended up back in jail for committing crimes while they should have been behind bars.

“Those were crimes that clearly would not have occurred had they stayed in jail,” Sheriff Mike Carona said. “We’re going to send a clear message to the crooks of Orange County that if you get arrested here, don’t expect to get out on the streets in record time.”

The problems stem from a 1978 federal court order aimed at easing chronic overcrowding at one the most cramped jail systems in the nation. While state law allows counties to release inmates within 72 hours of their sentences ending, the court order requires Orange County to set convicts free much earlier if the system cannot handling the influx of new inmates.

The county continues to release thousands of inmates during the three-day period allowed by the state, but officials hope to cut the number of longer releases to zero. In the first 10 months of the year, roughly 41,000 days were shaved off inmate sentences, compared to 110,000 days in 1998.

Officials warn, however, that the changes are coming at a price: The space in the jails is growing ever tighter.

Deputies in previous years kept beds free to ensure that inmates could be segregated along gang affiliation. But those beds are now being filled as part of the drive to keep inmates in longer, raising the specter of placing rivals together and unleashing gang fights. No such fights have been reported so far, but officials said the risk is growing.

“We’re on the brink right now of bursting at the seams,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Kim Markuson, commander of Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange. “This is a Band-Aid solution.”

As a result, Carona and others maintain that the county still needs to build new jail facilities.

Carona is now searching for a suitable site in South County to place a new jail, while the Board of supervisors is pushing forward with plans to greatly expand the James A. Musick Branch Jail in Irvine.

The Musick expansion is strongly opposed by nearby residents and helped inspire an initiative on the 2000 ballot that would require voter approval for any new jail facilities and other controversial projects such as airports and landfills.

Carona’s predecessor, Brad Gates, frequently cited the early release of inmates in his 20-year struggle to win approval to build a new jail. But Gates drew fire because of the practice. In 1991, a Municipal Court judge angry over the large number of early releases sentenced Gates to 30 days in jail unless he halted the practice. The sentence was eventually overturned on appeal.

The dramatic plunge in the number of inmates freed early led some legal experts to question why the action wasn’t take earlier.

“If [Carona] can do it within a year of coming into office, the idea that . . . [it] couldn’t have been done [earlier] is laughable,” said George P. Wright, chairman of Santa Ana College’s criminal justice department.

Assistant Sheriff Rocky Hewitt, who has worked under both sheriffs, said Gates pushed hard for new jail beds and fewer early releases but was unwilling to risk the security problems that could come with further packing the jail cells.

Carona has also reduced early releases by moving some inmates who once would have been housed in maximum-security cells to minimum-security facilities if officials believe they won’t act violently.

Deputies are also being more selective about who they place in jail, turning some inmates accused of low-grade misdemeanors such as trespassing over to work programs or sending them home with orders to appear in court.

While the Sheriff’s Department has reduced the total number of days inmates are released early by about 60%, more than 13,000 inmates have left jail before their terms are up. Almost all of them, however, were set free within the 72 hours allowed by the state.

Nonetheless, Carona said the county needs an extra 5,100 beds within a decade. He said he will make solving the space crunch a priority for his administration, going so far as to vow that he will not seek reelection if he fails to ease the logjam.

“The good news is that we’ve maximized every resource at our fingertips,” Carona said. “But the bad news is that we know that we still have a critical problem with jail beds in the county.”

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Doing Longer Time

Orange County’s overcrowded jails are keeping more prisoners behind bars for longer.

The number of convicted prisoners released with more than 10% of their sentence unserved:

1998: 5,845

1999*: 78

*

Total days shaved off inmates sentences because of early releasing:

1998 110,000

1999* 41,000

* Figures for 1999 are for the first 10 months of the year.

Source: Orange County Sheriff’s Department