County Withdraws Offer to Downscale Jail Expansion Plan

Orange County supervisors formally withdrew an offer Thursday to scale back plans for expanding James A. Musick Branch Jail in exchange for two cities dropping their lawsuits against it.

The county wants to build as many as 7,968 beds for inmates at the onetime honor farm, which now houses 1,256 inmates. The county’s environmental review of the project was challenged by Irvine and Lake Forest; an appellate court last month ruled that the review was appropriate.

Days before the court ruled, supervisors offered to cap Musick’s growth at no more than 4,400 beds if legal challenges by the cities were dropped. Lake Forest agreed to the deal, but Irvine’s council rebuffed the offer last month, saying it wanted to look for a more remote site to relocate the Musick jail, which is sandwiched between Irvine and Lake Forest.

County supervisors are expected later this month to continue planning for the expansion, which officials hope to complete by 2005. Sheriff Mike Carona said he will stick by the smaller expansion offered to the cities, calculating that only 3,144 new beds will be needed for Musick to handle the county’s jail population through 2050.

The three county supervisors who support the Musick expansion said the project, plus an expansion at the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange, will take care of the county’s jail needs well into this century without looking for a remote site. The county has been under a court order since 1978 to reduce overcrowding among jail inmates.

The expansion of Musick to 7,968 beds would cost about $40 million, according to county estimates.