County Jail May Evict Its State Inmates

Desperate to ease tensions that have sparked more than two weeks of unrest at Los Angeles County jails, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted unanimously to cancel a $27-million contract to hold state prisoners in county cells.

The move means that 1,300 high-risk felons would be moved out. At the same time, the board asked Sheriff Lee Baca to seek ways to send 1,200 more offenders back to the state.

Baca backed the action but said it could take up to six months to implement.

The presence of convicted felons from the state prison system in local jails is considered a significant contributing factor in the racial and gang-based violence that has left two inmates dead and more than 100 injured. A disturbance involving 40 inmates occurred Tuesday at Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, sending four men to the hospital, according to county records.

Altogether, there are about 3,000 state inmates in the county system at any given time, Baca said.

An aide to Supervisor Gloria Molina, who led the move to end the contract, said that nearly all of them are housed in large dorms at Pitchess, the site of most of the recent violence.

The county agreed to house state inmates in its jails in 1997 as a way to raise money, said County Administrative Officer David Janssen.

Short of funds to open the Twin Towers jail in downtown Los Angeles, the supervisors -- with the backing of then-Sheriff Sherman Block -- decided to use the income to help staff that facility. The newly built jail had lain empty for two years during an earlier county budget crunch.

But Molina said Tuesday that canceling the contract would free up 183 deputies and civilian prison guards to better staff Twin Towers and watch inmates in the overcrowded dorms at Pitchess.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” Molina said in an interview. “Why not eliminate the contract and get those deputy sheriffs back into our system?”

Sending the 1,300 inmates covered by the contract back to the state would also allow Baca to reduce his early release program, in which low-level offenders have been freed in order to ease crowding, he said.

That would get those offenders out of local communities and back into jail, he added. It would also shift the inmate mix at Pitchess back toward the lower-level prisoners for which experts say such facilities should be used.

There are two categories of state prisoners in local jails. Some are parole violators, for whom the county is paid $68 per day. The others are felons with less than a year to go on their sentences, who are sent to local jails in order to acclimate them to the communities in which they will be released.

The felons on their way out of jail, who are covered by the contract, would be sent back as part of the board’s decision.

Todd Slosek, spokesman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said state officials had not been contacted by the county to discuss canceling the contract. But he said that the question of how best to house prisoners when both state and local facilities are crowded is a significant issue that must be addressed.

“The department will look at whatever resolution was passed by the Board of Supervisors, and looks forward to a dialogue with officials,” Slosek said.

When asked what he would do if the state refused to take back the prisoners, Baca said he was willing to force the issue if necessary.

“If I put them in buses and drop them off at their facilities, then it’s their problem,” the sheriff said. “And they’ll have to deal with the problem they’ve created for us.”

The Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday asked Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley to file homicide charges against 10 men investigators believe participated in the Feb. 4 killing of inmate Wayne Tiznor. The 45-year-old African American, who was in jail for failing to register as a sex offender, was beaten to death in a racially charged melee that involved 2,000 people.

The department will also seek murder charges in the case of Sean Anthony Thompson, 38, an African American inmate who died Feb. 12 after being outnumbered in a fight with Latino inmates in a cell at Men’s Central Jail, Baca said.

Altogether, a sheriff’s spokesman said, the department has identified 44 inmates against whom it wishes to press charges for their involvement in the violence.