Sheriff Locks On to Jail Problems : Talks between Jim Roache and county officials bring hope to troubled facilities

The San Diego County sheriff is talking with other county government officials about the jail problems. What a refreshing change of pace from the John Duffy years!

What’s more, Jim Roache seems to be approaching the discussions with an open mind.

It will take lots of flexibility plus a good dose of creativity to deal with this mounting list of problems:

* The jails are under court order to reduce crowding. Routinely, about 3,800 inmates are housed in jails that the state says should have no more than 2,345.

* A new jail on East Mesa, which could accommodate 800 to 1,200 inmates, is scheduled to be completed next month. But the county does not have the money to operate it, and a lawsuit is holding up title to the land.

* The money to expand and operate the East Mesa jail is sitting in an escrow account awaiting a ruling by the state Supreme Court on the legality of a 0.5% sales tax increase that county residents have been paying for two years.

* In El Cajon, the poorly constructed walls of the jail are so easy to break through that 15 inmates have escaped since the jail opened in 1983.

* The county has promised to close a temporary jail for 600 men next to the Santee town center.

The critical first step is to get the East Mesa jail open as soon as possible. That means settling the lawsuit over the cost of the land. A jury awarded the former landowner $55.6 million for the land the county took under eminent domain. The county had paid $6.4 million. The judge reduced the award to a maximum of $22.9 million. But the landowner, Roque de la Fuente, who had earlier agreed to settle for $10.2 million, has appealed the judge’s award.

Settling this issue is vital to the county. We would hope that De la Fuente would drop his appeal and settle for the $22.9 million--more than twice what he originally would have settled for--as a gesture of good will. We also hope that his lawyers will reduce their $15.4-million bill.

Any money the county has to spend fighting this claim will only make paying it off more difficult.

Once the title to the jail is clear, the county and the sheriff need to figure creative ways to use that space to maximum advantage.

East Mesa was built to make supervision more efficient. Perhaps inmates and guards from the least efficient jails could be transferred to East Mesa. This would accommodate more inmates, even though it might mean temporarily closing some beds in the older jails.

Roache’s idea of closing the escape-ridden El Cajon jail for renovations and transferring those inmates and guards to East Mesa is a good first step. And we hope that the discussions he will be holding over the next few weeks with county administrators will yield further proposals. We also hope to see some progress on discussions on borrowing brig cells from the Navy.

But we have reservations about closing Santee at this point. Transferring Santee inmates and staff to East Mesa should be done only if it would result in a net gain of beds.

The supervisors also need to have a revised plan for a tax increase ready to go on the ballot, in case the Supreme Court strikes down the existing one.

But, at least for now, relations between the sheriff and the rest of the county officials look constructive. Their working together offers hope.