County should cut federal inmates to free up beds

Gov. Jerry Brown's new "realignment" law.  Many have been contracting out jail beds for state and federal inmates at below-cost rates. Now they will be getting more local inmates, as some offenders who used to be sentenced to prison will be sentenced to counties.

Should they scale back state and federal inmates to free up jail space – or open a new jail wing?  Last year, on an average day, Sacramento County jails housed 482 state and 453 federal inmates – 23 percent of the total. The county gets $77 a day for state inmates, $100 for federal inmates. Yet the daily cost in the Main Jail is $112.

The county's inspector general repeatedly has said this is a bad deal and stretches jail capacity. He has been ignored. Realignment should cause rethinking. The county expects 900 new sentenced inmates in a year, on average, and 200 revoked parolees. The task is to find space for 1,100 new inmates.  The Community Corrections Partnership has focused on three areas:

• Use space freed when the state contract expires Dec. 31  (400 beds).
• Screen pretrial inmates, keeping some defendants in the community while
   they await trial (200 beds).
• Use home detention for some sentenced offenders (300 beds).

That leaves 200 or so beds.

An obvious option is to reduce the number of federal inmates. The contract is flexible, requiring no minimum numbers. Why not go back to levels of a decade ago to free up 200 or more beds?   But that is not in the plans being presented county supervisors on Tuesday. Instead, the committee on a split 4-3 vote recommended reopening the 275-bed Bauman jail.

Jettisoning 200 federal inmates would mean giving up $7.3 million a year in federal dollars. But reopening the 275-bed jail would mean ongoing annual costs of $8.6 million – hiring two new sergeants, 29 deputy sheriffs, two records officers, health professionals.

Sheriff Scott Jones says he is willing to "re-close our jail wing" if the county reduces inmate numbers in other ways. But that would mean firing 29 just-hired deputies. Good luck with that.  Managing federal inmate numbers provides more flexibility than reopening a jail wing.

Supervisor Don Nottoli touched on this at the Oct. 25 informational workshop. Supervisors will need to be aggressive in insisting that federal inmate numbers be reduced to make room for new local inmates.