U.S. Seen Backing Off on Crowded County Jails

The federal government is expected to back off on any legal attempt to combat the chronic overcrowding in the Los Angeles County jail system, which is nearly 8,000 inmates over capacity, it was disclosed Monday.

Andrew Barrick, a senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said the overcrowding problem is being adequately addressed in separate litigation.

“I don’t want to be put in an awkward position and tell you that everything was fine and we’re closing (the investigation),” Barrick said. “But I would say that our sense is that the major issues were being addressed by the county, whether on their own or with private plaintiffs.”

Barrick was referring to a still-pending American Civil Liberties Union suit filed in 1974 challenging such jail conditions as the amount of time prisoners have to eat and exercise.

Not Contacted

ACLU attorney John Hagar said Justice Department lawyers had not contacted him about the jail situation but agreed that the ACLU had “the situation well in hand.”

Barrick said a final decision must still be made but added that as head of the team that investigated the jail system late last year, his recommendation will carry a lot of weight with his superiors. Barrick and Gene Miller, a Washington correctional facility consultant, inspected all of the system’s jail facilities but focused primarily on the Men’s Central Jail, which has a 5,118-inmate capacity. On Monday, the Central Jail held 8,046 prisoners, or 57% more than it was built to handle.

Barrick said the Justice Department will notify local officials in the coming weeks of its decision. The investigation was launched last October, when the jail facilities were swollen to nearly 18,000 inmates or more than 50% above the intended capacity of 11,824 inmates.

On recent weekends, the inmate population has topped 20,000. On March 8, for example, there were 20,071 prisoners in custody.

Outline of Problems

Also included in a report detailing the Justice Department’s conclusions will be an outline of continuing problems that need to be addressed, Barrick added. He declined to discuss the findings.

Jail facilities in about a dozen other large cities have been investigated by federal officials under the 1980 Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. Several of the jails were required to improve inmate conditions after the federal government brought suit.

Principal Deputy County Counsel Fred Bennett said Barrick’s team “advised us that (the Los Angeles County jail system) was a remarkably well-run institution.”

“They, as well as we, recognize the strains on the system of the overcrowding,” he said.

“Their words were that the conditions did not warrant their intervention,” Bennett said.

Bennett said county officials have been working with the ACLU to prepare a number of proposals to ease the jail overcrowding that will be presented to the county Board of Supervisors in the next few weeks.

Bennett would not elaborate on the possible remedies, saying they had not been completed. He indicated, however, that the building of new jails was not considered the only solution to the problem.

“A quick fix is not necessarily a good fix,” Bennett said. “Building another large jail is not necessarily a good solution.”

ACLU’s Hagar said the jail overcrowding proposals, which he stressed were still under negotiation, include establishing limits on the number of inmates housed at the Central Jail, starting a work release program for minor offenders and speeding along criminal cases by using night courts.

Overcrowding was the basis for the lawsuit brought against the jail in 1974. The federal complaint charged among other things that jail officials had unconstitutionally violated inmate rights by banning physical contact between prisoners awaiting trial and members of their families. Jail officials defended the practices, which ultimately were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in July, 1984.

However, U.S. District Judge William Gray and the attorneys for both sides acknowledge that other jail problems remain to be solved, mainly those stemming from overcrowded conditions.

“Overcrowding itself is not necessarily unconstitutional . . . (but) it causes consequences that lead to inadequate treatment of inmates,” Hagar said.

For the past five months, Hagar said, jail officials allowed the ACLU to inspect inmate population data, as well as the facilities themselves, on demand. He said civil rights attorneys have concluded that “it’s obvious that the institution is under control.”

Hagar said that he has not witnessed a climb in violent incidents at the jail but added that as a result of the overcrowding, officials have found it difficult to comply with all of Gray’s directives. These include allowing inmates at least 15 minutes for each meal, 2 1/2 hours of exercise time a week and two changes of underwear a week.