LOS ANGELES, CA - Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca wants the county to spend more than $300 million to add thousands of beds to improve conditions in its aging and overcrowded jail system.

Baca said Monday he would ask the Board of Supervisors to approve funds to reopen the Sybil Brand Institute for Women in Monterey Park, build a minimum-security women's jail in Castaic and add hundreds of new high-security cells for male inmates at the North County Correctional Facility. Under Baca's plan, the department would move more than 2,000 women out of a high-security jail in Lynwood, which instead would be used for the county's most dangerous male inmates. Each project would take more than 18 months.

"The board is working aggressively, the county administrative office is working aggressively and the Sheriff's Department is working aggressively to come up with a number of options to improve the system," Baca said.

For several years, the department has been releasing inmates early because it does not have enough beds, and most inmates serve less than 10 percent of their sentences.

Difficulties separating the most dangerous inmates from the rest of the population has also been a problem, which officials say has contributed to a series of jail killings and riots.

The department currently plans to move 1,200 inmates out of the downtown Men's Central Jail, which a federal judge recently said was so overcrowded that conditions are "not consistent with basic human values." That jail holds six inmates in cells intended for four, and four inmates in cells intended for two. After the transfers, the cells will hold their intended capacity, Baca said.

"It will improve how we operate the jail. No question about it," Baca said.

Decreasing the population at the downtown Los Angeles jail is an important step, said Jody Kent, who monitors the jails for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, It was at the ACLU's urging that U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson toured Men's Central Jail in May before ordering the department to improve conditions.

County officials and the Sheriff's Department have been working together for months to devise a strategy for the jail system, which houses about 18,000 inmates.

The supervisors will be given several options to consider, said Jan Takata of the county's administrative office.

The board set aside nearly $200 million in this year's budget to increase jail capacity. Improvements costing more would have to be financed, Takata said.