Inmate Plan May Be Scuttled

A key part of the plan to quell racially charged violence in the Los Angeles County jail system -- canceling a contract that allows the state to keep roughly 1,300 prisoners in county facilities -- is in jeopardy.

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously last month to return the prisoners to the state, saying the move would free space in the overcrowded jails and remove some of the most violent offenders. Initially, Sheriff Lee Baca supported canceling the contract, though he said it could take up to six months to implement.

But since then, both the Sheriff’s Department and David Janssen, the county’s chief administrative officer, have expressed concerns about the plan. They say that the jails need the $27 million the contract brings in and that removing the state prisoners won’t make the jail system safer. Supervisors will revisit the issue on April 4.

The dispute comes at a delicate time. Baca has said he needs at least $300 million to reopen the shuttered Sybil Brand Institute for Women in Monterey Park for female inmates and to move high-risk male offenders to the downtown Twin Towers jail, which now holds women and patients with mental disabilities.

Supervisors have embraced the need for improvements, but paying for them with a jail bond measure is still a matter of much debate.

The county jail system was struck by weeks of melees in February and early March, leaving two inmates dead and more than 150 wounded. The violence was largely between Latino and black inmates, underscoring racial tensions in the jails.

County supervisors argued that the state prisoners added a population of hardened criminals to a jail system already bulging with violent offenders. Many high-risk inmates are housed in open dorm areas -- where most of the recent melees began -- that were designed for low-risk inmates.

But Janssen said he looked at state prisoners’ criminal backgrounds and found that only a small percentage of them were high-risk felons. He said removing them would do little to quell violence in the jails.

As of March 20, said Paul Tanaka, assistant sheriff, 730 state inmates were in the county jail system. Of those, 18.6% were “level 8s” and “level 9s,” the highest threat levels in the county’s inmate classification system. Throughout the entire jail system, he said, 25% to 28% of all inmates are levels 8 or 9.

“The argument that they -- state inmates -- are solely the problem is probably not true,” Tanaka said.

If the county cancels its contract with the state prison system, it would need to find a way to cover the $27 million it would lose.

Baca has said that if the state inmates are removed from the county jails, he would fill their places with low-risk offenders who are now being released early because of overcrowding. Simply shutting down the beds now used by the state prisoners would be impractical, Tanaka said, because they are scattered throughout the county’s jail system.

“Essentially, we are going to walk away from $27 million worth of revenue to free up beds for misdemeanors,” Janssen said.

The Sheriff’s Department has been battling with the Board of Supervisor for years over jail funding. Baca, whose annual budget is about $1.9 billion, has argued that some of the problems facing the jails have been caused by cutbacks the board made in his budget a few years ago. Supervisors last year, however, gave Baca more than $75 million to reduce jail overcrowding.

In the wake of the melees, Baca has been moving some of the highest-risk inmates out of dorm-like facilities and into those with more secure cells. He also hopes to soon place more high-risk inmates in Twin Towers, a $373-million complex with security features that are lacking at many of the county’s other jails. Among them are far more one- and two-person cells, which allow officials to isolate problem inmates.

Even with the opposition of the Sheriff’s Department and county administrative office, it will ultimately be up to the Board of Supervisors whether to cancel the prison contract.

“There is no one answer to the violence,” said Supervisor Gloria Molina, who led the move to end the contract. She added that canceling it is “only a portion of what can be done.”

She said that eliminating the state prisoners would free up the 183 deputies who handle them.

“That’s a lot of deputies,” she said. “And these are people who should be working for us.”

At last week’s Board of Supervisor’s meeting, Molina said “there are a lot of issues” in dealing with crowding and staffing problems in the jails, adding that canceling the state contract is just a part of the solution.

“I am willing to wait for the day that Sheriff Lee Baca, who was elected to do that work, comes and squarely tells me those issues,” she said.

Baca, who was out of the country last week, is expected back today. Tanaka said that Molina’s willingness to listen to the sheriff was a good sign, adding that Baca said he intends to meet with Molina personally.

“She, after being adamantly in favor of canceling the contract, did leave one opening,” Tanaka said.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich said through an aide that he still supports the plan.

“The supervisor’s position is that if we have an overcrowding issue, how does it make sense to continue to have 1,300 inmates that are state responsibility?” said Antonovich’s justice deputy, Anna Pembedjian.