Baca: More Cuts Mean More Will Go Free

As criticism of the early release of jail inmates mounted, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca warned Thursday that even more could be freed as early as July if his budget is cut again.

Baca predicted that if that happens, no one convicted of a misdemeanor would serve time in jail in Los Angeles County, regardless of the sentence a judge imposed.

Activists and others Thursday criticized Baca’s release over the last year of more than 47,000 inmates who served as little as 10% of their sentences, including spouse beaters and drunk drivers, to save money.

“What kind of a message does this send to criminals when, 24 hours later, they’re back on the streets?” said Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. “They’ll say, ‘Well, that was easy. Maybe I can try murder next.’ ”

Marci Fukuroda, who leads a domestic violence project for the California Women’s Law Center in Los Angeles, called the early release of more than 2,000 spousal abusers and nearly 900 people convicted of violating restraining orders appalling.

“We’ve spent the last 30 years building up criminal justice protections in the area of domestic violence,” she said. “But the reality is that few [abusers] ever receive any jail time. It seems that now we’re just letting them all go.”

Drunk drivers should be among those jailed the longest, said Tina Pasco, executive director of the local Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter. “They are proven to cause catastrophic injury and death,” she said.

Baca acknowledged that early jail releases hamper law enforcement efforts, but said public safety required that he not take any more patrol cars off the street as a way to save money.

“When it comes to patrols, I am cut to the bone,” Baca said.

The sheriff’s $1.7-billion budget has been cut almost 10% over the last two years, and Baca said it could be cut by at least $35 million more beginning July 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

Baca began the early release program last April, cutting the daily jail population by 2,600 inmates to save $17 million a year.

The threatened new cuts would mean that space for twice that many inmates would be eliminated, requiring even more early releases.

Baca said Thursday that an informal review of about 100 early releases found that 18% were rearrested within 90 days for new offenses.

Chief Charles M. Jackson, who oversees the early release program, said he believed the sheriff’s budget decisions would withstand public scrutiny.

“I don’t like letting these people out,” he said. “But I don’t have a lot of choice on this.”

The Sheriff’s Department resorted to similar early releases twice before -- during a jail overcrowding crisis 15 years ago, and when several thousand inmates were freed to save money in the mid-1990s.

Baca is now pushing a half-cent increase in the local sales tax to generate an estimated $500 million a year for law enforcement, including the Los Angeles Police Department.

County supervisors, who set Baca’s spending levels, differ on how to fund the sheriff’s budget.

Supervisor Michael Antonovich said Baca had to do a better job of lobbying his colleagues to get more money for public safety.

“Of course he needs more money,” Antonovich said, blaming the pinch on county spending in other areas, such as the living wage law for contractors.

But Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said Baca needed to examine his own spending first.

“He has to make every attempt to look at every item in his $1-billion budget before releasing inmates who are dangerous,” she said.

In January, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a fresh round of cuts that would trim an estimated $459 million from Los Angeles County government. If that comes to pass, supervisors would have to decide where the cost savings would come from.

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton has blamed the early release program for undercutting his so-called broken windows strategy, which is based on the notion that punishing lesser offenses leads to reductions in major crimes.

But Ben Wizner, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, blames Bratton for contributing to the problem by arresting “people who really don’t belong in jail,” such as homeless people sleeping on downtown streets.

“The LAPD is arresting them and clogging up the system,” Wizner said.

Wizner, who monitors the sheriff’s compliance with a federal court order on jail conditions, said Baca would have more space available for local inmates if hundreds of state prisoners were shipped out faster, and if the state decided not to revoke probation or parole for minor offenses.

“If more resources were brought into the system ... we wouldn’t be talking about releases,” Wizner said.

A 1988 order by U.S. District Judge William P. Gray authorizes the sheriff to release inmates early to reduce jail overcrowding. It does not dictate his use or nonuse of jail facilities, requiring only that they be “operated constitutionally at their appropriate capacity,” said John Hagar, a former ACLU attorney who litigated the federal case governing jail conditions in Los Angeles County.