California supervisors meet to reduce jail population
LOS ANGELES, Calif. (CBS, KYMA/KECY) - New agenda item added to Tuesday's Los Angeles County supervisor's meeting. It calls for reducing the County's jail population by expanding use of "cite and release."
Anyone with bail of less than $50K would be released. Union for prosecutors calls the plan dangerous and reckless.
“So you're gonna treat a guy who's just committed a residential burglary the same as you would with someone who just blew a stop sign, and that is just absurd," said Eric Siddall.
Siddall is the Vice-President of the Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys, and he says that the proposed plan to “depopulate and decarcerate” L.A. County jails; in other words, to release inmates and find alternatives to time behind bars; is dangerous.
“Well, for example, people who are committee acts of domestic violence, they would be eligible for cite and release, burglars, robbers, those people will be eligible for cite and release, a felon, a career criminal caught with a firearm," Siddall added.
Proposal is elsewhere
In the motion, it says the sheriff’s office would be instructed to “release individuals committed and/or sentenced to the county jails for misdemeanors and/or felonies who can be safely released back into the community” based on regulations previously developed by the sheriff’s department.
The proposal, submitted by County Commissioners Lindsey Horvath and Hilda Solis, starts by suggesting to “declare the state of mental health services and overcrowding in the Los Angeles County jails a humanitarian crisis.”
On the mental health priority, Siddall agrees saying, “There has to be an alternative to putting people in a jail setting,but is still locked down, so that people with severe mental issues can go to a place where they can receive treatment. That is not the same as county jail. We need to increase those facilities right now. That is not happening.“
However, he suggests the motivation for the proposal is elsewhere.
“And the real reason why they're doing this is because they don't have a plan to to deal with the closure of Men's Central Jail. And as I'm sure you're aware, Men's Central Jail right now houses about 5,000 inmates. Los Angeles County has about 15,000 inmates right now so they're going to lose a third of their capacity. And they've never developed a plan about what to deal, how to deal with this with this impending issue, and so their solution is basically to start releasing violent criminals," Siddall further spoke.
