By Jeff Horseman and Jim Miller
The Press Enterprise
RIVERSIDE COUNTY, Calif. — The state will award Riverside County $100 million to expand the jail system and ease prisoner crowding, Sheriff Stan Sniff announced Thursday.
“We’re ecstatic the state saw the great need we have in this county and the state responded to it,” Sniff said. He credited the working relationship between his department and other county officials for helping to secure the grant, the maximum amount available.
To get the grant, the county must come up with $10 million in money or improvements.
Sniff cautioned that more jail capacity is years away and that more investment will be needed to solve the county’s chronic shortage of jail space.
“We’re in trouble for quite a while,” he said.
Board of Supervisors Chairman John Tavaglione said he was very happy but not surprised, considering the conversations he and Sniff had with state lawmakers about the county’s jail needs.
In all, the state Corrections Standards Authority awarded $602 million in grants to 11 counties Thursday. Los Angeles and Orange counties also received $100 million.
The county’s 3,906-bed jail system has been under a permanent federal court order to relieve crowding since 1993.
Compounding the chronic overpopulation is the state’s so-called realignment, which shifts responsibility for low-level offenders and parolees to counties. Riverside County has had to release more than 600 inmates early since January.
County supervisors authorized Sniff to seek the jail expansion funding last October. The application was formally submitted in January.
The money will cover construction, not staffing, and can be used to either add to existing jails or build a new facility. Sniff said he thinks it makes the most sense to expand the Indio jail.
Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning is maxed out, he said, and there’s no pressing need to add space at Robert Presley Detention Center in downtown Riverside. Space might not be available to enlarge the Southwest Detention Center in French Valley, Sniff said.
He noted that the Indio jail expansion is the top priority in the county’s capital budget.
The Board of Supervisors last May shelved a $300 million plan to build a regional jail on 140 acres in Whitewater, saying it didn’t make sense given the county’s dismal finances. The project faced opposition from desert area residents.
In a phone interview, Tavaglione said he isn’t in favor of revisiting the Whitewater jail. “I think we need to look at all our options with Whitewater not in the picture,” he said. “We need to respect the feelings of the people there.”
Sniff’s department still wants a regional jail. The sheriff said his department is “not locked into any particular tract of land,” although it makes sense to build in the San Gorgonio Pass area, which is in the middle of the county.
Even if the jail planning started today, it likely would take a least a couple years before the new beds would be ready, Tavaglione said. The county still needs to figure out how to staff the facility and pay for infrastructure.
Assistant Sheriff Steve Thetford said the required $10 million match could come from a combination of money, paying to install infrastructure for new jail space and in-kind services.
Tavaglione said supervisors will have to decide how to match the state grant.
“Thankfully we’re getting our deficit in order,” he said. "(But) $10 million doesn’t come easily right now. We’ll find it somewhere.”
The grant money comes from a $7.4 billion borrowing measure, AB900, initially passed by the Legislature in 2007 to reduce prison crowding and improve inmate health care.
The Legislature retooled the program in 2011. In a news release, Riverside County sheriff’s officials said they did not take part in the first phase of the grant program “due to unreasonable strictures, requirements and a higher match.”
San Bernardino County was one of the early recipients of AB900 funding. That county received $100 million in 2010 for an Adelanto jail expansion already under way that is expected to be completed in summer 2013. The project adds 1,368 beds to the 806-bed facility.
So far, the Corrections Standards Authority has awarded approximately $1.2 billion to 22 counties for jail construction.
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