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# LA sheriff plea bargains for jails
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/la-sheriff-plea-bargains-for-jails/
- Published: 2004-09-09T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T05:01:31.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Crime, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Measure A would pump $50 million into LA jails*

*By GENEVA WHITMARSH Daily Press Staff Writer*

Severe budget shortfalls are forcing the Los Angeles County sheriff to grant early release to an average of 130 inmates a day, many having served as little as 10 percent of their sentences.

At most, jail officials release as many as 50,000 inmates a year — nearly enough to fill Dodger Stadium. And among those inmates are some of the 2,063 people arrested in Santa Monica this year who eventually get shuffled into the county jail system.

Those freed include drunk drivers, shoplifters, car thieves and abusive spouses. The early releases have stirred controversy over whether the savings in tax dollars are worth what many see as a threat to public safety. Approximately 20 percent of the inmates released in the past year were arrested again within 90 days, according to state officials.

“What this does is lessen the impact of punishment,” said Santa Monica Police Chief James T. Butts Jr. “People who commit a crime are risking being caught or punished, and when you remove or lessen one of those, it makes that calculation a lot easier for the criminal.”

Sheriff Lee Baca implemented the early release program earlier this year in an effort to adjust to $200 million in budget cuts over the past two years and the additional $109 million in cuts contained in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget.

Rather than shrink street patrol, Baca frees the inmates based largely on the seriousness of the crime and how much jail space is available. Drug offenders, vandals, car thieves and embezzlers are being released after serving 10 percent of their sentences. Others, such as stalkers, spousal abusers and people convicted of vehicular manslaughter, generally serve from a quarter to half of their sentences, according officials at the sheriff’s office.

“The reality is that we’ve experienced these types of conditions for the last four or five years,” Butts said. “The average misdemeanor was serving about 50 percent or less of his sentence, because they’d get one day of good time for every day they served. So, we’ll adjust.”

Baca is actively stumping for a tax proposal on the November ballot that he says would put an end to the inmate early release program. Measure A asks voters to decide whether the county sales tax should be raised by.5 percent to fund local police and fire departments, jails and other agencies. The proposition would net an estimated $560 million, with $50 million to go toward jails. Approximately $4.2 million is earmarked for Santa Monica law enforcement.

“We’re going to create a state of emergency in the county if we keep going in this direction,” Baca said in a press release. “We won’t have enough people to man our jails. Thus, criminals will run free on the streets of LA, beyond what they are already doing now.”

The most visible result of cutbacks in the nation’s 3,200 jails are the hundreds of prisoners who are walking out on early release each day. At the top of the list is Los Angeles County, the largest jail system in the world and home to 17,500 inmates, about 70 percent of whom are awaiting trial.

Sandi Gibbons, spokesperson for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, said the early release program presents a problem with cases settled by plea bargain.

“Say we set up something where (the accused) has three years probation with the stipulation of spending a year in county jail,” Gibbons said. “There’s not much deterrent if that year turns into a couple months.

“The early release does certainly eliminate or put a big dent in the deterrent of any jail term,” she said. “We have to come up with creative ways to handle negotiating pleas rather than jail time, because jail time doesn’t mean jail time.”

Some say the cutbacks in jail time not only threaten public safety but also the safety and morale of law enforcers and jail personnel who must make do with less —and then watch prisoners whom they have spent their careers locking up walk free early.

“There’s no impact on the local police because we understand what our role is,” Butts said. “We recognize that once a person is sent to jail, it’s out of our hands.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 9, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/090904.pdf?ref=smdp.com)