An Inmate’s Guide to Four-Star Jail Cells

You’re busted, heading to jail for a one-time mistake, say, petty fraud or drunk driving. You’re small, frail, haven’t used your fists since the fifth grade and are about to meet some seriously hard-core dudes at county jail.

Could you defend yourself? Or would you be victimized and face years of therapy?

Those not eager to learn the answers firsthand might be relieved to discover one of the best kept secrets in the area: You can rent a cell in a much quieter, presumably safer municipal lockup.

At least 10 smaller cities throughout Los Angeles County, from the South Bay to the San Gabriel Valley, run pay-to-stay programs for low-risk offenders, with prices between $40 and $145 a night. The accommodations range from spartan to comfortable or downright quaint, and they occasionally attract such celebrities as actor Christian Slater or rapper Dr. Dre.

For the municipal hosts, the arrangement spells dollars. Some police departments advertise to attract paying customers to offset the public costs of their main operations--holding suspects before arraignments and during trials.

But pay-for-stay jail arrangements strike some as unfair, allowing wealthier offenders to avoid conditions and threats that poorer defendants must endure.

“It is a way for people with money to get better justice,” said attorney Gerald Scotti, who recently defended convicted madam Jody “Babydol” Gibson. “This is not available to indigent people. I, myself, would not hesitate to send my clients to a city jail rather than a county jail.”

Added Michael Small, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, who monitors conditions in the downtown county jail: “It’s potentially troubling in that it raises questions of inequitability, both between races and between rich and poor.”

Jail officials, such as Cmdr. Mary Schander of the Pasadena police, say the rates are reasonable enough to accommodate almost everyone.

Schander said it’s often easier for even low-income inmates to pay $55 a day on work release programs, which allow them to keep their jobs during the day, than to take time off or admit to their bosses why they must go to the clink. The county probation department also has a work release program.

“As long as we have the extra capacity, we will have the service,” she said.

The Pasadena jail brings in about $300,000 per year from about 180 paying inmates. That helps with the overall $1.8-million cost of booking and keeping the other detainees--about 7,300 last year, officials said.

To keep the money coming, jail officials make a pitch in a special flier available at the police station: “Serve your time in our clean, safe secure facility! . . . Prices range from $55 to $78 per day. . . . We are the finest jail in Southern California!”

One inmate who took the city up on its offer recently was a restaurant manager and convicted drunk driver from Agoura Hills, who asked to be identified only as Mr. Kim.

“I heard that county [jail] is dirty and dangerous, especially for Asian guys like me” he said. “There’s so many gang members, they beat us up.”

At Pasadena’s 8-year-old facility, Kim and other paying inmates are allowed to watch television or select movies from the video library. They can ride the exercise bike, sip coffee and use the bathroom in privacy. Most important, they are kept away from others in the facility who could be murderers and rapists.

“I just wanted a vacation,” Kim added, as he finished watching the movie “The Mummy.”

His bunkmate, a Burbank mechanic doing six days for drunk driving, said: “This is like a hotel.”

And the Pasadena jail is booked through September.

But that doesn’t compare with La Verne’s lockup, where Slater spent 90 days for battery and drug violations in 1998, serving coffee and cookies to visitors. Like some popular bed-and-breakfast, La Verne’s four bunks are booked until 2001; would-be guests have to undergo screening interviews to serve time.

The line is long because, unlike other jails, guest inmates who stay at La Verne full time don’t pay. They work off their rent by washing cars, serving food or raking the grounds. Those on work release, who leave during the day, pay $40 a night.

A second enticement: Compared with the dirty and massive concrete modules of the county Men’s Central Jail, the La Verne jail feels like Mayberry RFD. When not laboring, guest inmates can sit in an open garage and gaze out at the mountains, the brick hardware store next door and oak-lined streets. In fact, they could make a jail break without even jumping a fence.

Officials assume it just wouldn’t be worth it, though.

“You’d go from 100 days in the La Verne Jail to three years in the state pen. Have at it,” said Lt. Jim Strona, who runs the jail.

Strona tells inmates to bring sleeping bags and, if they want their own food, to put it in the refrigerator marked for prisoners. Last week, the fridge was filled with Entenmann’s Danishes and Hungry Man frozen dinners.

Strona shrugs off criticism that the department’s going soft on criminals. “This is by design. We don’t want it to turn into a cesspool,” he said. “Our job is not to punish people. It’s to incarcerate people.”

On the Westside, jail-shoppers can choose Culver City. But for $75 a night, it is bare-bones, with dim lights and steel tables. The truly finicky prisoner would have to learn to use the toilet in front of other people.

In other words, it’s more like a jail.

Hermosa Beach is reportedly much the same, but its fee is $145 a night.

The catch with all such municipal programs is that the sentencing judge has to allow a defendant to go to a local jail instead of the county’s central lockup. That’s likely to happen only for a misdemeanor conviction, after which the subject is not immediately taken into custody but must simply complete his time by a certain date, jail officials said.

Women Find the Jail Pickings Slim

It does not matter where the crime occurred. A drunk driver arrested in Santa Monica can go to Burbank or Monterey Park to do time.

Women may have less luck finding a program, because there are far fewer female inmates and the sexes must be kept separate in the cellblocks. It just doesn’t pay off for smaller facilities, such as La Verne, to house them, officials said. Other lockups, such as Pasadena, accept women only on certain weekends, so the female offenders often serve their sentences in segments.

Attorneys and authorities say they don’t know of any comprehensive list detailing municipal pay-to-stay programs around the county. Often, the defense attorney will be the one to know about such options and recommend them.

“I always joke with my wife that I’d rather go into custody in Pasadena than go to certain social events,” said Mark Geragos, a prominent defense attorney who usually recommends that jail.

Geragos said his clients have routinely been assaulted, and even raped, at the Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles.

“You can only imagine what a 5-foot-6, 150-pound man from La Canada Flintridge would do there,” he said. “They have no skills to survive.”

There is no doubt the regular county jail would intimidate the uninitiated. At the downtown men’s jail, the rows of cellblocks are long and dingy, scarred with gang tags and lewd pencil drawings.

Inmates with shaved heads and tattoos stare and flash gang signs. The cells are not as closely watched by guards as at some city facilities. And although county authorities try to assign inmates to particular cellblocks based on the severity of their crimes, there are no guarantees.

“If a new inmate comes up to me in tears and says, ‘I’m scared to death,’ my first piece of advice is dry your eyes. Don’t let them see you scared. Relax. Take a deep breath,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Todd Zerbel, on a tour of the facility.

Then, Zerbel said, he tries to put such inmates in special cells for “soft” inmates.

For the most notorious or famous--such as actor Robert Downey Jr., O.J. Simpson and drummer Tommy Lee--the county reserves solitary cells downtown. That is called the “high-power” section, designed to minimize risk of attack, Zerbel said.

Still, sheriff’s officials say there are no more assaults per capita in the men’s jail than at most municipal facilities and, like others, he said that graphic scenes in such movies as “American Me” have overstated the personal dangers.

There may be only one advantage to sticking with the county jail, rather than going to more comfortable municipal digs: Due to crowding and other considerations, most inmates with minor infractions serve only half their sentences, sheriff’s officials said.

But municipal jailers, like Mike Korpal of Pasadena, say their services will always be in demand.

“Despite where these folks are,” he said. “They deserve to be treated with some dignity.”