Opinion: Sheriff Baca, why the rush to build more jails?

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The ACLU’s Peter Eliasberg and Margaret Winter respond to The Times’ Nov. 23 editorial, ‘L.A. County should be careful on jails.’ Eliasberg is legal director for the ACLU of Southern California; Winter is associate director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project.

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Given the mounting evidence that for years a violent clique of rogue sheriff’s deputies has been savaging the inmates in Men’s Central and other Los Angeles County jails, The Times is perfectly correct in calling on Sheriff Lee Baca to show that he can properly run the jails he already has before asking taxpayers to fund his $1.4-billion building project. But the problem with the sheriff’s massive construction plan goes deeper than his inability to control his deputies; a more basic question is whether this staggering spending spree for new construction would actually do anything to increase public safety.

It would not. Instead, it would be a shameful waste of scant resources in pursuit of the same failed jail expansion policy that has already cost the taxpayers billions. There is no justification for pouring an additional $1.4 billion for new construction into the already bloated jails budget when far better, quicker and cheaper alternatives are readily available.

These alternatives include the sensible use of the thousands of existing empty beds in the county jails system. Less than 20 years ago, county taxpayers paid a fortune for the construction of Twin Towers, a state-of-the-art facility that was supposed to allow the closure of the adjacent Men’s Central Jail, then (and still now) a seriously antiquated and unsafe facility. Today, there are about 1,000 empty beds in Twin Towers -- and about 4,000 more in other jails throughout the county system. Indeed, a 1,600-bed jail at Castaic, which is a much newer and better facility that Men’s Central, currently houses two inmates. The sheriff has never plausibly explained why he needs another $1.4 billion for new construction when there are so many thousands of empty beds in existing facilities.

Furthermore, the sheriff is empowered to bring about a safe, rapid and dramatic decrease in the need for more jail space. As the U.S. Supreme Court pointed out this year in Brown vs. Plata, jurisdictions across the country are now safely lowering their prison populations through such means as pretrial release of low-risk detainees and electronic monitoring. The vast majority of the inmates in Men’s Central Jail are pretrial detainees; many of them are held on charges of low-level, nonviolent or trivial offenses, and most are in jail because their families are too poor to post bond. A very significant number of them -- likely about one-quarter -- have serious mental illness and are receiving little treatment in jail.

Baca should follow the lead of local governments across the nation that are addressing the fiscal crisis -- and breaking their addiction to mass over-incarceration -- by bringing in experts to identify the low-risk pretrial detainees who could be safely released pending trial. Since 2007, the ACLU has repeatedly proposed that the sheriff and the county retain the most eminent of these experts, James Austin, to help come up with a plan to rapidly and safely reduce the jail population. Until recently, the sheriff and county have refused to cooperate.

Last month, however, in the wake of the media storm over the violence in county jails, the sheriff and the Board of Supervisors agreed to retain Austin for such a study -- on the condition that the ACLU foot the bill. The ACLU agreed to do so, and Austin’s study will be completed within 90 days. It would be the height of irresponsibility for the county to approve $1.4 billion for a construction project before reviewing the results of the study that may well prove that the construction is simply unnecessary.

ALSO:

Baca’s jails are Baca’s problem

L.A. County should be careful on jails

Sheriff Baca was warned about jail deputies’ conduct, retiree says

Does L.A. Sheriff Lee Baca get a pass?

-- Peter Eliasberg and Margaret Winter