O.C. Studies Exporting Inmates

Hoping to ease overcrowding at the Orange County Jail, Sheriff Michael Carona is considering a plan to send hundreds of Orange County inmates to a $100-million private facility in the Mojave Desert, officials said Monday, although it was unclear whether state law would allow such a system.

More than 10,000 new jail beds will be needed by 2006 in the county system, where many prisoners wait as long as three or four years before they go to trial, Assistant Sheriff John “Rocky” Hewitt said.

One solution would be to rent space at a privately run maximum-security facility recently built in California City, about two hours from Los Angeles in Kern County.

Use of the facility, which now stands empty, would cost $55 a day for each inmate, and would be arranged in an agreement with Los Angeles and Kern counties’ sheriff’s departments. Prisoners would remain the responsibility of the respective counties’ departments.

“We are not going to put our prisoners in a jail being watched by anyone else than officers or sheriff’s deputies, “ Hewitt said. “It is simply not legal.”

Under state law, however, jail inmates must remain in the county in which they were arrested pending trial, and the sheriff of that county cannot turn the responsibility over to a private entity.

That does not apply to inmates who have been sentenced and are waiting to be transported to state prison, Carona said.

Questions remain as to “whether or not the board of supervisors from one county can partner with the board of supervisors from another county in a contractual relationship,” Carona said, and funding issues would have to be resolved.

Such a plan would require extensive coordination among counties, Hewitt said. “There’s a lot road to travel,” he said. “There are liability issues and costs. This is just one of many alternatives.”

Orange County has been under a federal judge’s order since 1978 to alleviate overcrowding. Last year, the Board of Supervisors released a study showing that the county’s jail system, built to house 3,821 inmates, had an average of 5,500 inmates.

During his election campaign last year, Carona promised to find a solution to the problem of overcrowding, but proposals for new jails have encountered protests from residents and local politicians.

Officials from California’s Board of Corrections recently inspected the new 2,300-bed facility in California City and found that the bunks are too narrow and that electrical outlets and paper towel dispensers could be made into weapons.

The prison was built at a cost of $100 million. Its warden is Daniel Vasquez, the former head of San Quentin.

Corrections Corp., the Nashville-based owner of the facility, has 77 jails in the United States, Puerto Rico, Australia and Britain.