A Logical Choice for Jail Site

It took too many years, but the Orange County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday finally made a decision on a so-called “remote” jail site. It selected Gypsum and Coal canyons south of the Riverside (91) Freeway east of the Anaheim Hills for the new 6,191-inmate lockup and ancillary facilities.

To its credit, the board, under fire from residents near each of the four sites under consideration, made the tough decision it knew at the outset would be unpopular. Considering the options the supervisors had and the fact that there is no ideal place left in Orange County to locate a new jail, the Gypsum-Coal Canyon area did appear to be the best and most logical choice.

Public officials in nearby Anaheim and Yorba Linda and residents in Anaheim Hills area understandably don’t think so. They are threatening legal action. That, too, was expected. From the start, the term “remote site” was a misnomer. Such a locale no longer exists in urban Orange County. No matter where a jail is located, it can’t be far enough away from someone’s neighborhood.

That public pressure and accompanying political heat is something that politicians usually respond to with studies and anything else they can conjure up to delay a decision that would anger many voters. The county board was no different. But the jail issue couldn’t be put off any longer. Site selection and construction is already years overdue.

The four locations the board had under final consideration had survived years of studies and had been part of a list of 29 “remote” sites selected for review. And hanging over the board as it deliberated Wednesday was the specter of U.S. District Court Judge William P. Gray, who in 1985, after waiting seven years for the supervisors and Sheriff Brad Gates to comply with his 1978 order to ease overcrowding in the main County Jail in downtown Santa Ana, had cited them for contempt of court.

Under that order, the county cannot keep jamming people into overcrowded jail cells at the men’s main jail, where the judge imposed a limit of 1,296 inmates. As it is now, the sheriff must turn away about 350 people each week, booking only the most dangerous criminals.

So the preliminary decision, which must be made final next month, was made. Delaying it even longer would only have meant that whatever site was chosen would be further affected by more surrounding development or the prospect of it.

The board’s decision made Orange, San Juan Capistrano and Santa Ana happy. They won’t get the jail. And although the Anaheim area will, it, too, benefited by the Gypsum-Coal Canyon selection because that choice should surely eliminate from county plans the 1,500-inmate jail the county had planned to build on Katella Avenue near the Anaheim Stadium that the city has been opposing so vehemently.

The supervisors also told Anaheim residents that there would be no intake and release center at the new jail. That should eliminate the fears residents have that hundreds of prisoners each day will be released into the canyon neighborhood.

County plans also call for the sheriff to confine prisoners who are awaiting trial in the Santa Ana jail so that transportation costs can be held down. Doing that also means that virtually all the inmates at Gypsum Canyon jail would be serving a year or less for minor misdemeanors and charges like drunk driving and nonsupport. They would not be convicted murderers and rapists, as so many canyon residents mistakenly fear. Those kinds of violent prisoners are confined in state and federal prisons.

Although the board’s selection of a construction site is a major step in the development of more urgently needed jail space, it is only the first and perhaps the easiest part of the problem. All the county has to do now is find the estimated $600 million that it will take to acquire the land and build the facility. For that the supervisors may have to go to the people with a bond issue that would require a two-thirds vote for passage.

For more than a decade the county has needed a new jail to meet its responsibilities to the public and the prisoners in its custody. Now that it has finally selected a site, it must keep the new jail program on the fast track to completion.