Baca in Talks for Jail Funds

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said Sunday that he is negotiating with county officials for a dramatic increase in funding for the troubled jail system, beginning with a $300-million infusion to reopen the shuttered Sybil Brand facility and to make other improvements aimed at reducing violence.

The funding would be the first part of a much larger -- and expensive -- proposal the sheriff has been developing to fix the jail system, where violence has left two inmates dead and more than 150 injured in recent weeks.

Baca said that a long-term effort to improve the jails would cost more than $1 billion, including $800 million to rebuild the aging Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles.

But acknowledging that the whole package is cost-prohibitive, Baca said he is pushing for a piece of it now in hopes the efforts will ease the explosive racial tensions between Latino and black inmates as well as lessen the chronic overcrowding that has led to the early release of thousands of inmates before their sentences are up.

“It isn’t so much as what I need -- it’s what the county needs,” Baca said in an interview.

The sheriff’s package calls for a one-time expenditure of up to $200 million to refurbish and reopen Sybil Brand in Monterey Park, the county’s longtime women’s jail that was closed in 1998.

Under the plan, Sybil Brand would again be the county’s women’s jail, allowing the sheriff to use the higher-security Twin Towers jail downtown and another facility in Lynwood for high-risk male offenders.

In addition, Baca is seeking more than $100 million in additional annual operating expenses that would be used to staff Sybil Brand and also beef up security for high-risk offenders at other jails, including Twin Towers and the Lynwood jail.

It remains unclear where the county could find the money for such sweeping jail improvements.

Baca and other law enforcement officials have been lobbying the state Legislature to include local detention facilities as one of the beneficiaries of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s $222-billion infrastructure bond proposal.

There also have been discussions in Sacramento about a separate jails-related bond. Baca said he was not sure how long it would take to make the fixes if the money becomes available.

The Board of Supervisors last year gave Baca more than $75 million aimed at reducing jail overcrowding, and board members said they were well aware that more money was needed.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who has clashed with Baca on jail funding in the past, said he is willing to consider expensive jail upgrades, including Sybil Brand. But he said the sheriff must show that he has wisely spent the $1.9 billion that already has been appropriated.

The county houses many violent inmates in jails designed for less violent offenders. Up to now, the department has not used Twin Towers, a state-of-the-art jail designed for high-security inmates, to house violent offenders because it hasn’t had enough staffing or money.

A prime goal of Baca’s proposed upgrades would be to move high-security inmates who now live in large dormitories where some of the recent violence has erupted into more secure cells.

Both jailers and outside experts said increasing the number of high-security cells is perhaps the best way to reduce violence. A majority of the roughly 21,000 prisoners incarcerated on any given day are housed in dorms, not cells.

“The biggest challenge, it seems to me, is the facilities themselves,” said county Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen. “They were designed for a different population.”

But moving inmates into cells is about more than retrofitting jails. Cells take more deputies to staff than dorm or barracks-style facilities (some dorms house more than 100 inmates). That means higher operating costs, which is why Baca is seeking a $100-million boost to his operating budget.

“Short of putting [dangerous inmates] in a single cell and locking them all down ... there’s no magic solution here,” Baca said.

The sheriff’s overall budget is about $1.9 billion a year, which covers operation of the jails and the patrolling of dozens of cities across the county.

Baca has been at odds with the county Board of Supervisors for years over funding for the nation’s largest jail system. But in the wake of the racially charged melees of the last two months, both the sheriff and board members said they want to work together to improve conditions.

“If he came back to the board and asked for more money ... and he told us how he was going to spend it and he told us how he spent the money we gave him already, then we would be open to giving him what he says he needs,” Yaroslavsky said.

According to county records, Baca was forced to cut several important law enforcement programs, close a jail and release some misdemeanor offenders early in the 2002-03 and 2003-04 fiscal years in order to deal with tens of millions of dollars in increased costs for other services, including workers’ compensation, lawsuit settlements and overtime.

During that time, state and county governments were reeling from losses in tax revenue caused by fallout from the dot-com bust. Baca’s budget has gone up since then. Still, he blames the past financial woes and the resultant cuts for some of the increased violence.

But Merrick Bobb, who monitors the Sheriff’s Department for the Board of Supervisors, said that by reworking his fiscal priorities, Baca could better staff the jails and open up more cells for high-risk offenders without a substantial increase in funding.

Within his current budget, Bobb said, Baca could take steps such as returning to the state about 2,500 felony prisoners whom the county has agreed to house, ending a contract to house federal immigration detainees and opening up all of the 4,100-bed Twin Towers for violent and high-risk inmates.

Bobb also urged the department to move more quickly in implementing a computerized system of classifying and housing inmates so that violent inmates would not be placed in dorms or cells with those who are likely to become victims.

Baca and others, however, said the Sheriff’s Department was trying some of these short-term ideas but warned that they alone won’t solve the larger problem. For example, the Board of Supervisors voted last month to seek to end a contract with the state of California under which local jails house felony inmates.

But that program brings in $27 million per year -- money that would have to be replaced by the county if the contract were ended. And Janssen, the county’s chief administrative officer, said that such a move might not be helpful if the sheriff -- as he has indicated -- simply backfills the state positions with misdemeanor suspects who have been let out of jail before their sentences are up because of overcrowding.

“If we had $27 million of [the] general fund to put in the jails, what is the best way to use it?” Janssen asked. “It may not simply be canceling the state contract and backfilling with misdemeanors. It may be keeping the state contract and using the money” for something else.

The department already has taken a number of steps aimed at quieting the jails. Officials have been moving inmates they believe instigated the melees out of the Pitchess jail in Castaic and into more secure facilities. There are signs these efforts are working: Unrest in the last week appears to be waning.

Baca and other sheriff’s officials believe reopening Sybil Brand is a key first step. By moving women back there, the sheriff could concentrate high-risk offenders who are scattered across the system into Twin Towers and the Century Regional Detention Center, where female prisoners now housed in Twin Towers would live until Sybil Brand is rehabilitated.

But even if the county comes up with the money to fund the sheriff’s dream budget, he and others say, it would be unrealistic to expect violence in the jails to end completely.

“You can design all the buildings to suit your needs, and you’re still going to have inmates killing each other and doing crazy things,” Baca said. “Because they are what they are.”