Toward Grander Juries
An organization as important as the Orange County Grand Jury should reflect the community. That means no more all-white, mostly male panels.
Orange County judges deserve credit for an aggressive recruiting campaign to get more minorities on the grand jury. The selection process is not complete, but fortunately the pool of applicants for next year’s panel is not all-white.
The county’s population now is about 30% Latino and 13% Asian. The grand jury, which serves as a watchdog of government, should mirror that diversity as much as possible.
But all 19 grand jurors on the current panel and all 11 alternates are white. The composition of the panel caused deserved concern and a widespread effort to widen the net for members.
Superior Court Judge C. Robert Jameson, chairman of the county’s grand jury recruitment and selection process, said it was “unconscionable” that a county with so many Latinos did not have one on the grand jury. He and other judges waged a vigorous campaign to encourage more minority applicants. Ethnic groups were urged to solicit their members. More than 1,000 companies and community groups were given applications and information packets. Judges visited community organizations and council meetings throughout the county.
Jameson said he was disappointed by what he considered a “kind of meager” result. But the applicants to start operations July 1 included 15 Latinos, nine Asians, five blacks and six Native Americans. That’s substantially more than last year’s numbers.
Because there also were 137 white applicants for the next grand jury, the odds are good that whites will fill most of the slots. But no matter what the composition of the next panel, the judges have to ensure that they continue a vigorous effort. One reason the current makeup was such a shock was the diversity of the grand jury several years ago, when more than one-third of the members were minorities. Unfortunately, the pattern did not hold.
The lesson is the need for a continuing recruitment campaign across all ethnic groups in the county. The judges went on Vietnamese radio this time to seek out members, a good idea.
Because grand jury service takes four or five days a week, with pay only $25 a day, most jurors will be retired. Companies that allow workers to serve and do not penalize their pay deserve credit and support.
Having jurors from a variety of age groups as well as ethnic backgrounds benefits the county, since members bring different perspectives to the task. More female applicants would be welcome, too; about 75% of the applicants in the latest pool are men.
Grand juries can return criminal indictments, a function that also can be undertaken by the district attorney’s office. An important task of citizens who step forward voluntarily to sit on a grand jury is to monitor government operations. The previous panel studied and issued reports on water quality along the coast and the problem of urban runoff, the Board of Supervisors’ salaries and health care for the indigent.
The current jury has reported on special education programs and found fault with the federal government’s failure to provide promised funds.
The grand jurors also have looked at what happens to some of the hundreds of children who turn 18 after being reared in foster care or group homes, under the nominal supervision of the county Social Services Agency.
The panel found that until recently, many teenagers were sent into the world without high school diplomas or much in the way of job skills, let alone lessons in independent living and survival skills. The jurors faulted the county for not having an overall countywide coordination of programs, data, services and transitional housing for what are called emancipated youth.
That monitoring provides the extra eyes county residents need and deserve to examine how government workers are performing and how they can do better.
The grand juries build on the work of their predecessors, in some cases exploring the same topics and programs for improvement. As the county learned during the bankruptcy, civil servants need scrutiny just as much as do employees in private business.
No group or gender has a monopoly on wisdom; expanding the ranks of the grand jury benefits all.