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| Baca in Talks for Jail Funds |
| By The Los Angeles Times |
| Published: 03/13/2006 |
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Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said that he is negotiating with California county officials for a dramatic increase in funding for the troubled jail system, beginning with a $300-million infusion to reopen the shuttered Sybil Brand facility and to make other improvements aimed at reducing violence. The funding would be the first part of a much larger and expensive proposal the sheriff has been developing to fix the jail system, where violence has left two inmates dead and more than 150 injured in recent weeks. Baca said that a long-term effort to improve the jails would cost more than $1 billion, including $800 million to rebuild the aging Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles. But acknowledging that the whole package is cost-prohibitive, Baca said he is pushing for a piece of it now in hopes the efforts will ease the explosive racial tensions between Latino and black inmates as well as lessen the chronic overcrowding that has led to the early release of thousands of inmates before their sentences are up. "It isn't so much as what I need it's what the county needs," Baca said in an interview. The sheriff's package calls for a one-time expenditure of up to $200 million to refurbish and reopen Sybil Brand in Monterey Park, the county's longtime women's jail that was closed in 1998. Under the plan, Sybil Brand would again be the county's women's jail, allowing the sheriff to use the higher-security Twin Towers jail downtown and another facility in Lynwood for high-risk male offenders. In addition, Baca is seeking more than $100 million in additional annual operating expenses that would be used to staff Sybil Brand and also beef up security for high-risk offenders at other jails, including Twin Towers and the Lynwood jail. It remains unclear where the county could find the money for such sweeping jail improvements. Baca and other law enforcement officials have been lobbying the state Legislature to include local detention facilities as one of the beneficiaries of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $222-billion infrastructure bond proposal. There also have been discussions in Sacramento about a separate jails-related bond. Baca said he was not sure how long it would take to make the fixes if the money becomes available. |
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