Build Jail Somewhere Else

During the past 20 years, the people of Orange County have made it abundantly clear that they do not approve of jails in close proximity to homes and families. The James A. Musick Branch Jail expansion plan indicates that county leadership has not received that message.

The quality of leadership is evidenced by the quality of resolution of difficult problems. The proposed resolution to the jail overcrowding problem reiterates an apparent cold and callous attitude toward South County residents.

The expansion plan seeks to construct a huge jail 700 feet from existing homes and families. A jail that would have more inmates (7,680) than the combined total (3,811) of all existing county jails. This plan is born of desperation and frustration and is an illegitimate monster. It is a wrong thing and there is no right way to do a wrong thing.

If the Orange County Board of Supervisors chooses to ignore the voice of the people and approves the expansion plan, I believe that we can, through the ballot initiative process, force this jail and all future Orange County jails to remote locations.

The criminal justice system is a failed system. Why should the taxpayers support and expand a failed system? When inmates are returned to the streets, they are more, not less, likely to commit a crime. We should not continue to support or expand a system that does not punish adequately or correct sufficiently.

Expanding Musick is not the solution to the jail overcrowding problem. This plan is a waste of time and money because the people of this community will never allow it to come to fruition.

MARCEL J. FERNANDEZ

Chairman

JAM (Jail Alternatives for Musick)

Lake Forest

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* Re “2 in Supervisor Campaign Offer Jail Solutions,” July 31:.

Residents of both Santa Ana and San Bernardino County should be outraged that supervisorial candidates Todd Spitzer and Mickey Conroy choose to propose housing more criminals in our communities. Why not search for a reasonable jail or prison site within their own district? Why not? They can’t take the heat from their own constituents?

Santa Ana has made great strides in curtailing crime within the city. Residents are proud of the efforts of neighbors who are involved in Neighborhood Watch, Community Oriented Policing, and the Orange County Congregation For Community Organizations.

Of course, we need to do more to make our city safe for everyone. We are now paying for a $100-million-plus new city jail.

Mickey and Todd, why not your district?

ZEKE HERNANDEZ

Santa Ana

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* Supervisor Don Salterelli fiddled with rhetoric while South County burned with anger at a Lake Forest community meeting last month.

Faced with a community of families who are technically his constituents (but realistically his abandoned stepchildren), the supervisor demonstrated once again that he is not willing to step up and protect or lead this community of citizens whose fate is charged to his care.

On Wednesday, Supervisor Salterelli asked us to trust that he cares about our communities, and to let the process work so that we can listen to the “experts” on the airport and prison issues. Our homes and playground are so close we can hear the inmates at the Musick facility. If you’re waiting for an “expert” to tell you what impact [jail expansion] will have, then there is a problem. If you’re waiting for “experts” to tell you what a cargo airport’s impact will be to our neighborhoods and streets just across Trabuco Road or Barranca Parkway, then there is a problem.

Neighborhood cargo airports, maximum-security prisons, overtaxation of Irvine to finance North County libraries, and who knows what else, the time is now to let the county govern those for whom they care, and let the underrepresented of south Orange County form our own county.

J. SHAW

Foothill Ranch