O.C. Sheriff’s Rehab Plan Faces 1st Test

Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona’s vision of building a small lock-down facility to treat jail inmates with drug problems faces its first political test this week when county supervisors decide whether to spend $1.3 million on the project.

Carona has made such treatment facilities a top goal in his first term as sheriff, arguing that rehabilitation is much more effective for addicts than simply putting them in regular jail cells.

The plan to build a 64-bed pilot project comes as correctional officials from Los Angeles to Sacramento begin to shed suspicions about drug treatment and lobby for state funding of such programs.

Carona’s proposal has won praise as a progressive way to deal with drug addiction--a social problem that resounds with the sheriff, whose mother died of alcoholism when he was a child.

The county Board of Supervisors will decide Tuesday whether to use a surplus in property taxes to fund the state-of-the-art facility.

If the board approves the measure, the county’s Health Care Agency will begin working with a private company--College Health Enterprises--to provide inmates with intensive drug counseling.

Those in the program would be segregated from the rest of the jail population and live in a special lock-down area of the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange.

The program would run for three to 12 months. Upon release, inmates would have access to referral services and counseling for another three months.

Sheriff’s officials said they believe the services can help inmates break addictions that drive many into a life of crime, even after their release from jail.

“If you’re still chemically dependent when you leave and you have no job, what are you going to do?” Carona said. “You’re going to go back to what you were doing before.”

Carona said he will track recidivism rates among graduates of the facility to ensure that the county’s program is effective. If it is, officials hope to expand to 500 beds.

The project would be one of only a few nationwide.

The Marin County Sheriff’s Department in Northern California runs a treatment center for dozens of substance abusers.

And last year, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca won praise for converting a jail into a rehab center for about 85 inmates.