HUNTINGTON BEACH : Offenders May Pay Extra for City Jail

The city will be the first in Orange County to allow misdemeanor offenders to pay extra to serve their sentences in the less-crowded city jail instead of County Jail.

Under the new program, unanimously approved by the City Council on Monday, 16 qualifying misdemeanor offenders may serve their time in the city jail in exchange for a fee ranging from $65 to $100 a day. The program is expected to start this week.

The program will help ease crowding in the Orange County jail system and bring the city as much as $166,000 in revenue each year--equivalent to about 14% of the city’s annual jail budget, Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg said.

Under the program, 16 bunks at the city’s 72-person capacity jail--now used chiefly as a holding cell--will be set aside for the new program.

Four women and 12 men who qualify for the program may serve their sentences in the city jail by paying $100 for the first 24-hour period and between $65 and $100 for each successive day. The cost would depend upon a participant’s ability to pay.

The Police Department will screen all applicants, Lowenberg said. Only inmates convicted of a misdemeanor in West Orange County Municipal Court who are approved by the city’s jail supervisor will be eligible.

“If you’ve got to come to jail, this is a nice, clean jail to stay in,” said Police Lt. Jack L. Reinholtz. “If I had to serve a few days, this is where I’d want to spend it.”

In the county jail system, most misdemeanor offenders who do not pose a security risk now serve their sentences at the James A. Musick Facility near El Toro, where they typically are housed in military-style tents.

Because of overcrowding problem at county jails, police officials elsewhere in the county predict that other Orange County cities will adopt programs similar to the one in Huntington Beach.

To date, seven other Southern California cities have started such programs. Those cities charge inmates between $75 and $100 per night to stay in their jails.

The Huntington Beach plan is the first of three jail-housing programs the council is expected to consider during the next four months to take advantage of the ample space in the city jail.

One of the programs would allow the city to house some suspects at its jail at the time of booking, rather than having them charged at a county facility. This would save the city the booking fee the county has been charging since Jan. 1, Reinholtz said.

The other proposal would allow federal marshals and the Immigration and Naturalization Service to temporarily house arrestees at the city jail during processing, Reinholtz said.