Jail Problems Persist Despite Dramatic Drop in Population

It took no more than a glance to see the problem at the Orange County Jail one chilly March day two years ago.

Sixteen inmates slept in cells meant for eight. The floors of rooms built for television viewing were covered with bedrolls.

Tempers flared and fists flew frequently.

A 7-year-old federal court order intended to end overcrowding in the five-story jail at Flower Street and Santa Ana Boulevard in Santa Ana was being ignored.

That ended March 18, 1985--two years ago this week--when a 75-year-old federal judge in Los Angeles dusted off his long-neglected and virtually forgotten order and found the Orange County Board of Supervisors and the county sheriff in contempt of court. He fined them $50,000 and threatened further penalties if his order continued to go unheeded.

The improvement in the jail since then has been dramatic. But last week the supervisors were given an abrupt reminder that all is not yet solved when a county grand jury statement cautioned that a “crisis” was at hand.

It said efforts to weed out less dangerous inmates from the jail to comply with court-imposed population limits have left the jail filled with only hard-core, maximum-security inmates who pose a threat to each other and to guards.

With a two-page letter to the Board of Supervisors, the grand jury thrust the jail overcrowding issue back to the forefront of the county’s problems and launched a wave of finger-pointing.

In the last two years, the county has moved inmates to branch jails, increased staffing, constructed new buildings, chosen a county-owned plot near Anaheim Stadium for a 1,580-inmate jail scheduled to open in 1990 and begun negotiations for another 6,000-inmate jail.

Yet despite all the money and effort, the Orange County Jail remains so overcrowded that some men still must sleep on the floor of the first-floor booking area while waiting for bunks to become free in the third- and fourth-floor housing units.

“Despite the good efforts, crowding continues to be a major problem at the Orange County Central Jail,” said Lawrence G. Grossman, the special master monitoring jail overcrowding for U.S. District Judge William P. Gray, in a Feb. 13 letter to the judge.

“All of the sheriff’s efforts do not seem to be able to alleviate the problem for a sustained period of time. It is quite likely that additional options will have to be employed until construction of additional secure beds is completed.”

From more than 2,000 inmates a day in 1985, the population at the main men’s jail has dropped to about 1,400 today, including inmates in holding cells and in the jail’s medical ward. The population in the main housing units averaged 1,250 at the beginning of the year, according to Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates’ office.

Gates, whose deputies run the jail, told the supervisors last May, last October and again this year that he needed 300 maximum-security beds immediately, but no action has been taken.

The sheriff said the $60-million Intake and Release Center being built next to the jail and now due to open in June, three months behind schedule, would not solve his problem.

He said the new facility will have only 288 beds for maximum-security male inmates and predicted that the American Civil Liberties Union will seek a court order to fill 100 of those beds with inmates from the main jail to get its population down to its intended capacity of 1,191. ACLU lawyer Richard P. Herman confirmed that he will seek such an order.

No Double-Bunking

The supervisors responded by saying they had been told the Intake and Release Center would solve the overcrowding problem. They said it could hold 700 inmates if double-bunking was used.

But, Gates said, the judge will not allow double-bunking at the new center. Herman agreed.

But, Herman said, there are 300 empty beds at the James A. Musick branch jail near El Toro. No, Gates said, the number of empty beds there is seldom as high as 100, and anyway, those are not in a maximum-security facility.

Last week, the wrangling over numbers and buildings caused tempers to fray.

After repeatedly praising the supervisors for giving him the support and money to reduce the number of inmates in the jail, Gates lashed out at Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder for wondering aloud at a supervisors’ meeting why no representative of the sheriff’s office was present.

“To grandstand it the way she did is not acceptable to Brad Gates anymore,” Gates said in an interview.

‘Breakdown in Communications’

He had met with Wieder and Board of Supervisors Chairman Roger R. Stanton on Tuesday, Gates said, and they did not ask him to show up Wednesday for the grand jurors’ formal presentation of their letter. If the supervisors later decided they wanted him there after all, Gates said, “they know my home number.”

Wieder said there had been a “breakdown in communications” and that she had been told Gates would be at the meeting. But, she added: “The finger-pointing has got to stop. Just because (Gates) says, ‘I told the board’ ” is not enough.

“From 1978 (when she was elected) until 1983, I did not know this (jail overcrowding problem) was a priority with the sheriff.”

Stanton added his own view of Gates’ absence at the grand jury presentation, saying that if he (Stanton) had been aware of a discussion of “something that crucial to a functional area I’m in charge of, I would have been there.”

But Stanton also took issue with the grand jury’s contention that, because of the winnowing from the jail of individuals accused of lesser crimes, the ones who are left pose a threat to other inmates and guards.

“We went from 2,200 to 1,290--and how can you have more, rather than less, of a security problem?” Stanton said. “We have increased staffing, improved recreational opportunities, improved feeding schedules. You really have less of a problem.”

‘Very Open’ to Suggestions

Stanton said the supervisors are “very, very open” to suggestions on where to find beds before the construction and operation of the Anaheim jail and the larger jail at a site still to be chosen.

“We want to do whatever we have to do, more so than I think we are being given credit for. And I think for this board to be continually portrayed by some folks as unresponsive is in itself an irresponsible act.

“If alternatives in terms of beds for hard-core individuals are needed beyond the 700 beds in the Intake and Release Center, then we will respond instantly. But it’s unfortunate to be hit with stray balls from the foul line as we try to pursue a logical course of action.”

Gates agreed in the interview that there is a more “concentrated” group of inmates accused of more serious crimes in the jail now than two years ago, but he said conditions have “absolutely” improved.

He said the reason for the improvement clearly is Gray’s March, 1985, decision.

“If the impetus hadn’t been there to get something done, we probably wouldn’t be as well off as we are,” Gates said. Because of the “political process we’ve seen with airports and other things,” facilities like jails and dumps are often delayed for years while communities and their elected representatives fight to get them put someplace else, anywhere else.

Release of Prisoners

But Gates noted that one of the byproducts of reducing the jail population is the release of some people accused of relatively low-risk crimes who would have been jailed two years ago. Nowadays he locks out many individuals who in the old days would have been locked in.

From March 6 through March 8 alone, he said, 163 people brought to the jail on warrants stemming from past charges and 132 more newly arrested people facing minor charges were given citations and told to show up in court on the appointed day. Two years ago, most of those people would have been booked into the jail and brought before a judge, who would have decided whether to free them to await trial or to set or refuse bail.

When police show up at the jail and ask if there’s room for someone they’ve arrested, “and I say ‘no,’ that’s a violation of law, a serious violation of law,” Gates said. “So the (police) chiefs are telling their people: ‘Don’t make Brad break the law; don’t arrest them.’ ”

Most men turned away from the jail with citations are charged with lesser crimes such as petty theft and public drunkenness.

But earlier this month the county’s municipal judges said Gates must stop the “wholesale” release of people arrested on misdemeanor charges even though it helps reduce overcrowding.

The judges said Gates’ refusal to accept people brought in on warrants issued by judges--usually because they have failed to appear in court on a scheduled date--often violates the law.

Caught in Dilemma

Gates agreed but said he is caught in a dilemma, with the municipal judges telling him to accept those arrested and the federal judge telling him not to let the jail overflow.

Since April of 1986, when he began turning people away, 11,865 men have been given citations rather than being booked into the jail, the sheriff said. Another 4,000 inmates have had up to five days shaved from their sentences by Gates to make room for fresh inmates, a practice that requires monthly approval from the Orange County Superior Court.

Most of the inmates at the jail are awaiting trial. If convicted and sentenced to less than a year, they serve their time in the jail. But people convicted of felonies and sentenced to more than a year behind bars are almost always sent to prisons, which are run by the state.

Possible “quick fixes” for the jail overcrowding problem have been mentioned. One would be to change the classification of inmates who can be sent to the Musick branch jail, letting people charged with more serious crimes be housed there. That would enrage El Toro residents, who already complain there are too many escapes from the branch jail.

Another would be to transfer inmates from the women’s jail, freeing perhaps 300 beds, and housing men there. But it is not known where the women would be sent.

A year ago, after a storm of controversy, the supervisors chose a site near Anaheim Stadium for a $141-million, 1,580-inmate jail. They picked the Anaheim site because the county owns it, cutting an estimated year off the time needed to plan and build the jail because there was no need to dicker over price with a private owner.

Bar on State Funds

But then-Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) pushed through legislation signed by the governor barring expenditures of state funds for a jail built on that site. Now the county will have to use its own money for the facility.

Additionally, the City of Anaheim is suing to block construction of the jail. Even if the suit fails, that facility will not open before 1990, county officials say.

And completion of the so-called “remote” 6,000-inmate jail, planned for a still unchosen site in a theoretically remote part of the county, is still further in the future. County officials are negotiating with private owners of suitable locations to see what possible locations would cost.

Money is a major concern to the supervisors.

The year of Gray’s original order, 1978, was also the year of Proposition 13, the property tax-slashing initiative that started county officials looking for other sources of income and ways to cut back.

Money for highways, housing, welfare and medical programs has been tight. Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, a retired Marine general, continually asks why inmates cannot sleep in triple-bunks as sailors and Marines on troop ships once did. Riley also sees funds that could be going for shelter for the homeless being earmarked instead for jails.

The grand jury warned last week that the problem of too many inmates and too few cells will not go away.

“Unless a well-conceived, long-term plan is developed that addresses the needs of our county for the next 10 years, these problems will only continue to recur,” the grand jury said.

“Such a plan will require a unified and nonpolitical approach in order to be successful, and will require the coordinated efforts of the Board of Supervisors, the county administrative officer, the sheriff, the judges and appropriate correction experts.”

FEWER INMATES Since U.S. Dist. Judge William P. Gray’s ruling on March 18, 1985, there has been the following periodic decline in the average number of inmates in the primary housing facility of the County Jail:

Date / Inmates March 18, 1985 / 2,200 April 1, 1985 / 1,800 July 1, 1985 / 1,700 Jan. 1, 1986 / 1,550 July 1, 1986 / 1,300 Jan. 1, 1987 / 1,250 All figures approximate.