More Jails or More Early Releases

Orange County’s need for more jails too often has a tendency to slip to the back burner. Thanks to a recent judicial ruling, the issue has moved to the front again.

A week and a half ago, a judge reaffirmed his tentative decision of last November that the county’s environmental-impact report on expansion of the James A. Musick Branch Jail was inadequate.

The county now has to do a better job of spelling out the effects of an expanded Musick jail, including the impact on air quality and on nearby agricultural land. But a more important task will be to explain what the impact on South County will be if Musick is expanded from its current 1,000 inmates and the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station becomes a civilian airport.

The two facilities are not far from each other. They are generally considered “nuisances” in land-planning terms. But jails are necessary, as are military bases. There weren’t too many people living in the neighborhood when the base started operations half a century ago and the jail opened its doors 35 years ago. Irvine had not yet been created. Lake Forest was not a city.

But South County has grown dramatically in recent decades, and opposition to converting El Toro to civilian use after the Marines leave next year has been strong; so has opposition to converting Musick from a minimum-security facility to maximum security and to increasing the number of inmates by several thousand.

Two years ago, when the supervisors approved expanding the jail by a 3-2 vote, the proposal called for housing more than 7,000 inmates at Musick. Supervisor William G. Steiner reflected a more realistic approach in saying that if Musick is expanded, it should hold perhaps 4,500 inmates, not 7,500. Still, Irvine and Lake Forest filed a lawsuit challenging the adequacy of the environmental-impact report.

Orange County long has been ordered by federal courts not to crowd its jails. To comply, Sheriff Brad Gates has discharged thousands of inmates every year before they finished serving their sentences. Although that would seem to run counter to Orange County’s image as a law-and-order stronghold, the releases have not stirred much of an outcry. By far, the bigger roars have come from residents near proposed new sites for jails or expansion of existing facilities.

One way to reduce the number of additional jail beds needed would be to expand alternatives to jails, such as work-release programs accompanied by anti-drug counseling. The county has not done enough in that field.

County residents and the men and women elected to provide leadership must face the reality that without new or expanded jails, increasing numbers of inmates will be freed before finishing their sentences. Some are certain to commit crimes while they should have been behind bars.