Freeing up jails

LOS ANGELES COUNTY’S OVERCROWDED JAILS are a danger to inmates, guards and everybody else. In the last four years, more than 150,000 inmates have been released after serving only a small portion of their sentences -- and thousands have gone on to commit crimes during time they should have spent sitting in a cell.

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors opted for the least effective but most politically practical of the solutions before it. The board’s $258-million fix won’t cure many of the ills of the decrepit jail system, but it might keep some dangerous criminals behind bars longer while protecting inmates from each other.

The latest jail plan mostly entails shifting female inmates out of high-security jails to make way for the violent male inmates for whom those jails were built. It was the cheapest of six proposals offered by Sheriff Lee Baca -- and if $258 million can be considered cheap, it’s only because the county’s jails are so undersized and outdated that truly fixing all the structural problems could cost in excess of $1 billion. Coming up with that kind money would require voter approval of a huge bond measure.

Even implementing the supervisors’ lower-budget vision will prove challenging. Not because of the money; thanks to a few flush years, the county has enough in its reserve fund to cover the cost. But one of the reasons the jails are so dangerous, with 10 inmate killings in the last three years, is that they are understaffed. The Sheriff’s Department is hundreds of deputies short of its full complement and is having trouble enough keeping new hires at the same pace as departures. The sheriff has three years, which is how long it will take to open facilities included in the $258-million plan, to improve his recruiting record.

Maybe the best news Tuesday was that supervisors also offered a creative solution to overcrowding that won’t involve hammers and nails. About 10% of the county’s jail population is made up of inmates who have been tried and sentenced to jail time, usually for misdemeanors. Because of overcrowding, these inmates almost never serve their full terms -- in fact, typically they serve only 10% of their time.

Officials would like to monitor more of those largely nonviolent inmates electronically, freeing up beds so more serious criminals could serve more of their sentences. But under state law, electronic monitoring is strictly voluntary, and few inmates choose it because they know their jail time will be short.

On Tuesday, supervisors unanimously approved a motion by Supervisor Don Knabe to lobby for changes in state law that would allow courts, sheriffs and probation chiefs to order inmates into electronic monitoring. Once a bill is drawn up by the county, the Legislature should embrace this smart and low-cost solution to a pressing problem.