Countywide : Jail Passes Muster but Lawsuit Stands

The Orange County women’s jail in Santa Ana passed its most recent state inspection with flying colors, the Sheriff’s Department announced Friday. But the news failed to elicit excitement from an attorney representing inmates suing the department over jail conditions.

In a statement to the news media, the county Sheriff’s Department said it is proud of the inspection report from the state Board of Corrections, which found the jail meets all state standards. A state inspector visited the Central Women’s Jail Nov. 20 and released his report this month.

Overcrowding was the only problem he found at the jail, inspector R. Neil Zinn said Friday.

“But that’s true for every jail in the state,” he said.

In his cover letter to Sheriff Brad Gates, Zinn wrote that the women’s jail is “unusually clean and well-ordered.” After reviewing several recent complaints from female inmates that medical care was lacking at the facility, he found the complaints to be unfounded, he wrote.

“Inmates are often demanding and manipulative in their contact with medical staff,” his letter says. “I concluded, based on the material that I saw, that the system is working as it should.”

However, Newport Beach attorney Dick Herman said the glowing inspection report resolves none of his concerns about longstanding problems at the jail.

Herman, who filed a class-action suit last year alleging that inmates face verbal abuse and are denied reading material, are observed by male guards while showering and are threatened by a lack of supervision by the jail’s outmoded design, contended that the announced inspection conducted by the state wouldn’t reveal these problems.

After the complaint was filed, a federal judge told the Sheriff’s Department to stop its jail deputies from verbally abusing inmates or remove them from the jail.

Jail problems brought up in the lawsuit are the type that “scrubbing up for a jail inspection don’t solve,” Herman said.

The most pressing problem with both central county jails is their poor design, he said. The 1960s design of the women’s jail--long rows of cells along a corridor rather than a modern design with cells clustered around a central guard station--threatens the safety of inmates with a lack of direct supervision, Herman said.

The design of Orange County’s central jails is outdated, Zinn acknowledged, and passing state muster doesn’t necessarily mean the county is immune from successful lawsuits over incidents at the jail.

But his inspections show the Sheriff’s Department is running the jails well, he said.

“In total, they run a decent system,” Zinn said.