Angry Poodle
Thursday, February 5, 2009
JAILHOUSE BLUES: For some reason, I just couldn’t focus. I was sitting in Judge Brian Hill’s courtroom on Tuesday morning, dutifully taking notes — so illegible that not even I can read them — and listening as lawyers argued whether the five county supervisors, in addition to Sheriff Bill Brown, should be held to answer contempt of court charges because of jail overcrowding.
Angry Poodle
Big Bill Brown was in hot water because 22 years ago a previous judge had ordered a previous sheriff to cease and desist forthwith the tradition of “floor sleepers” at the jail. In those intervening years, two of Brown’s predecessors failed to get the job done. And so, apparently, has Brown, despite Herculean efforts. Because Brown’s Hotel California now operates at 120 percent capacity — not safe for guard nor inmate — there are anywhere from three to 27 floor sleepers on a given night. (No one, I am told, actually sleeps on the floor; all inmates have mattresses and low-lying makeshift frames that can be jammed into any available nook and cranny.) Like his two predecessors, Brown’s solution to this mess is to build a new jail somewhere in North County, a gargantuan undertaking that will cost about $80 million to build and another $13 million to run. While Brown has made more progress on this than both of his predecessors put together — he’s got a site and he “secured” a pledge of $56 million from the state for construction — his timing could not have been worse.
The State of California is reneging on debts, furloughing workers, and teetering on the precipice of bankruptcy, so one questions how secure that $56 million is. Likewise, the county budget is in the state of a controlled rout, with Brown being asked to cut the equivalent of 60 sworn deputies from his staff. Even under the rosiest of scenarios, it’ll be a long while before Brown’s jail ever gets built. He also needs to get voters to approve a half-cent sales tax increase. A recent survey revealed the proposition is supported by only 54 percent of the likely voters, far short of the daunting two-thirds majority required by law. In the meantime, criminal defense attorney Robert Sanger — who filed his first action against jail overcrowding back in 1981 — and Public Defender Greg Paraskou want the floor sleeping to end now. To that end, they filed contempt charges against Brown, which will be heard on Friday the 13th this March. On Tuesday morning, they tried — and failed — to persuade Judge Hill that their action should also include the county supes on the very reasonable (but legally beside-the-point) grounds that Brown does not control the purse strings upon which success or failure depend.
I should have been riveted. But I kept thinking about recent phone calls about scruffy RV dwellers put behind bars because of unpaid tickets for illegal camping. Or what about the five Mexican nationals recently arrested off Foxen Road for animal cruelty because they ritualistically sacrificed a chicken for reasons other than consumption? I don’t pretend to know the actual circumstances under which this bird met its demise, but as a card-carrying carnivore, I’ll bet it was done considerably more humanely than how most commercially raised chickens are dispatched by Mr. Perdue. I’m still trying to find out why this chicken was sacrificed. Was it to lift a curse, dedicate a new house, or increase the odds of having a baby? Whatever the reason, it was probably no less exalted than that of millions of Super Bowl viewers, who ritualistically use and abuse genetically mutated chicken wings as vehicles to ingest ranch dressing. I also suspect these individuals, when not sacrificing chickens, put in an honest day’s work and probably for less than an honest day’s pay. That’s more than one can say for the bailout pimps working at Citibank who ordered the $50-million executive jet. Or the Wall Street execs who saw fit to reward their colossal failure with collective bonuses of $18 billion. Those people, we can be sure, will never see the inside of a county jail. Given the shortage of space at the S.B. County jail, I’d have found another way to deal with chicken sacrificers rather than warehouse them at taxpayers’ expense.
In an insane world, I guess only insane solutions will do. In arguing for the supervisors to be held for contempt, Sanger — who’d be a billionaire if he charged by the word — noted that the jail’s floor-sleeper issue could have been solved a long time ago if the County of Santa Barbara set aside just 36 beds for the mentally ill. That would undoubtedly cost a lot of money, but probably nowhere near the $80 million it will cost to build a new jail or the $13 million it will take to run. But that would require the county supervisors to find the will and the money to pay for those additional mental health beds. That will never happen. The Mental Health Department is a black hole of epic dysfunction, despite the heroic efforts of many who work there. Rather than provide the funding for such beds here, the county supes and department managers have been quietly shipping our mentally anguished to lockdown facilities in Ventura. The Grand Jury discovered that with the money we spend out of county — and the ambulance rides to and from cost an arm and a leg — we could provide the same service in our own backyard. But that will never happen. Contempt, in the face of these provocations, might be too kind.
In the meantime, the jail remains a managed nightmare. The jail has grown almost as picky as the UC system about whom they’ll book and whom they’ll take. And those who actually serve time tend to serve only a fraction of their sentence. By Sheriff Brown’s estimate, a person sentenced to 60 days can expect to serve for 12 if they stay out of trouble. Judges complain their sentences are meaningless, and the criminal justice system a sick joke. One judge got so exasperated a few years ago that he set bail for a petty crook and repeat offender at a million bucks for stealing tires with a prior. It didn’t work. For drug court to function effectively, judges say they need the ability to send backsliders to jail for a weekend to refocus their attention. But with the jail so jammed, there’s little chance. Brown is arguing that the jail has changed drastically and improved considerably since the 1986 order against floor sleepers was first issued. In the off chance Hill might find Brown in contempt in March, the sheriff is looking at a maximum sentence of five days in the slammer and a $1,000 fine. But as Public Defender Greg Paraskou joked in court, Brown would be a good candidate for early release. If the sheriff plays his cards right, he probably wouldn’t have to spend a single night.