Golding Urges Tighter Rules for Furloughs : Courts: Supervisor wants all private work furlough centers to monitor convicts more closely.

San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding recommended Friday that all private work furlough centers in the city of San Diego submit to stricter screening and monitoring of their convicts and suggested that the courts develop stiffer guidelines for those placed in the centers.

Reacting to articles in The Times that detailed the lack of supervision at the city’s three private work furlough centers, Golding called the situation a “blatant disregard for public safety that is unacceptable and must be corrected.”

In a memo distributed to other county supervisors, Golding asked that the chief administrative officer draft a contract to be signed with each of the centers that calls for law enforcement supervision, mandatory drug tests and extensive reporting to the courts about the status of its residents.

The county’s chief administrator, David Janssen, should also meet with judges to “develop and implement stronger sentencing and placement guidelines” under which the court will send inmates to private work furlough.

“We spend millions of dollars each year prosecuting and incarcerating criminals, and we cannot allow them to continue committing crimes under the guise of court-ordered work furlough sentences,” Golding wrote. “Without county contracts or sentencing guidelines, there may be a tendency to cut expenses at the risk of public safety.”

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote Tuesday on Golding’s recommendations.

Private work furlough began about a dozen years ago as part of a Navy effort to allow enlisted men and women to serve time for minor sentences rather than be kicked out of the service.

Since then, various work furlough businesses have started and stopped in the city of San Diego, leaving the city with three. They are the only three in the state that operate without law enforcement supervision and are not required to inform the courts if convicts violate probation.

State court judges favor the facilities, however, because the county is faced with severe jail crowding. Without them, the judges believe, convicts would be roaming the streets.

But, in at least eight instances in the past year, convicts assigned to private work furlough have been arrested for a variety of crimes. One felon never showed up at a facility and ended up shooting a sheriff’s deputy. Another, who brutally assaulted a lineman for the San Diego Chargers and was sent to a private facility tested positive for drug use and is now in state prison. Several have been arrested for dealing narcotics.

A new 438-bed center in Sorrento Valley, approved earlier this year by the San Diego City Council, is scheduled to open in September. In agreeing to open such a large facility, the city also established a subcommittee on work furlough expansion that included county and city officials, judges, work furlough providers and members of the community.

The committee developed a list of criminal offenses that would preclude an offender from being admitted into private work furlough, including murder, child molestation, rape, robbery, arson, manslaughter or a series of other serious crimes. The committee also increased the ratio of security guards to residents.

The city also agreed to hire a work furlough administrator in October with code enforcement training. But last week, City Manager Jack McGrory said he might hire a law enforcement officer to inspect the facilities after learning of the lax monitoring.

Without county contracts, private work furlough centers are inspected once every two years by the state Board of Corrections and occasionally by city officials for zoning, fire and building code violations. The city does not require that the centers provide a list of offenders’ names and does not check to see whether those who are supposed to be housed there ever show up.

Under Golding’s proposal, the private facilities would be forced to meet the standards of the county’s work furlough program, which houses 170 inmates. The county’s program is staffed by probation officers who decide whether someone is eligible for private work furlough and who require copies of each court order committing someone to a facility.

“Private work-furlough centers serve as an additional source of jail beds for alternative placement (by) judges,” Golding wrote, “but that should not stop the county, its judges and its officers from protecting the public from criminal offenders who violate their sentences.”

The additional monitoring, drug testing and other supervision should be borne by the private providers, she said. Already, residents of the facilities pay for their own room and board.

The county is in the midst of considering a private work furlough contract for at least 90 new beds. Before the contract is signed, however, Golding said, all private centers should be under county contracts.

A representative of the county district attorney’s office Friday called Golding’s proposal “extremely welcome” and said that county contracts would satisfy concerns by county and state prosecutors.

“We just want private work furlough to operate legitimately,” said Lou Boyle, a chief deputy district attorney in charge of the North County, South Bay and El Cajon offices. “We welcome this new direction. Having full reporting to the courts is essential to the future success of private work furlough centers.”