Overdue Reform at County Jail

As of tonight, according to Orange County Jail officials, the county will be in compliance with U.S. District Judge William P. Gray’s order. Every inmate will have a bunk and no one will be sleeping on the floor after his first 24 hours in the jail. High time.

Assuming that Sheriff Brad Gates, who operates the County Jail, meets tonight’s deadline, it will have taken no less than seven years to comply with the judge’s original order for the county to provide a bunk for every inmate each night.

But meeting the last deadline that the angry and frustrated judge issued 10 days ago after he toured the jail and saw that his March 18 order was still not carried out will be meaningless if the county slips back into its overcrowded and inhumane conditions. Judge Gray took the unprecedented step of setting rigid controls on the jail population to avoid that. County officials must also be dedicated to compliance, not because the court ordered it but because that’s the right and responsible thing to do.

The county intends to build a new jail and has reduced the main jail’s population by transferring prisoners to expanded facilities at two branch jails. But in keeping with the spirit as well as the letter of the court order, the sheriff and the county supervisors must now vigorously pursue the more extensive diversion and prisoner release programs they should have employed years ago.

That doesn’t mean hardened criminals with violent records would be put back on the street. They are not eligible for such release programs.

But the eligible do include hundreds of nonviolent prisoners jailed for minor offenses who pose no threat to society. They have been needlessly held in the jail when they could be released on their own recognizance or parole. That’s especially true of inmates booked on alcohol-abuse charges who, for their sake and the community’s, are better off being treated at a detoxification center than being arrested and locked up in a never-ending cycle that needlessly jams jail facilities and the criminal justice system and delays needed treatment.

Meeting the judge’s deadline should open a new era of enlightenment at the Orange County Jail. Getting inmates off the floors and into beds and reducing the overcrowding is good news for prisoners and jail personnel. It creates more humane conditions and reduces the risk of violence. Good causes that should have been achieved seven years ago.