LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a resolution to select the Mira Loma Detention Center in Lancaster as the new project site for a proposed female detention facility.
Concerned with intense overcrowding at the women’s facility in Lynwood, county supervisors have been looking to create more space for incarcerated women that has resulted from the large influx of state criminals into county jails caused by AB 109, or Realignment.
The proposed reentry facility for female inmates at the Mira Loma Detention Center, known as the Mira Loma Women’s Village Project, replaces the previous site proposal, the Pitchess Detention Center near Castaic, as the county’s proposed site for a new female detention facility.
The supervisors approved the project budget for $120 million, while appropriating $100 million in state funding from the Board of State and Community Corrections – previously awarded to the county through the state agency’s Construction of Adult Local Criminal Justice Facilities Financing Program.
The board of supervisors faced an end-of-the-month deadline to commit that grant money to the construction of a women’s detention facility – money that was previously allocated for a Women’s Village Project at the Pitchess Detention Center. However, easements at that site, from oil and utility companies, had stalled the county’s planning process.
To fully fund the project, the supervisors approved the transfer of $20 million from the county’s 2013-14 Capital Projects/ Refurbishments Budget, which was previously earmarked for the Pitchess Detention Center Women’s Village Project.
According to a response posted by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky on his website, zev.lacounty.gov/news, the board shifted the location of the proposed “women’s village” to Mira Loma Detention Center in Lancaster to free-up space at the current jail for women at the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood.
Sheriff’s officials report that the Lynwood facility is currently at 160 percent capacity, where “most inmates are being released after serving just a fraction of their sentences, if any at all,” the supervisor stated.
Yaroslavsky said substantial space opened up at Mira Loma after the federal Immigration and Custom Enforcement Bureau terminated its contract, leaving behind detention beds and infrastructure that would allow for more beds than at the proposed Pitchess facility – 1,604 versus 1,156 beds.
“The additional beds, according to the county’s Chief Executive Office, would be used to help inmates with mental health and substance abuse issues as well as to prepare the women for ‘reentry’ into society,” Yaroslavsky stated.
The board voted 4-0 to approve Mira Loma as the new site – while Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas abstained due to his concern that the board was taking action before coming to terms with a more comprehensive plan.
Responding to Ridley-Thomas’ abstention, Yaroslavsky called the board’s action a “no brainer” when faced with the need for new beds for female inmates, explaining that “doing nothing is not in our best interest from any point of view.”
Previously used as a federal detention site for undocumented immigrants, the Mira Loma Detention Center property is located at 45100 North 60th Street in Lancaster.
In October 2011, Realignment, also known as AB 109, was signed into law, transferring more than 30,000 inmates into local custody for Los Angeles County.
