PUBLISHED 5/15/08 ---

Kern County is in line for a $100 million expansion of its Lerdo Jail, and the check won’t come a moment too soon.

Overcrowding and disrepair have forced the Sheriff’s Department to release nonviolent offenders who, in most cases, have served only 30 percent of their sentences — a non-solution solution the 2005 Kern County grand jury criticized as a blow to judges’ intentions when they issue sentences.

Space constraints are so bad that at one point the Sheriff’s Department stopped accepting bookings of people arrested for certain misdemeanor offenses, including shoplifting, vandalism, trespassing, peace disturbances and possession of small amounts of marijuana. These days most people arrested for those misdemeanors are simply issued a citation following the booking process.

“In this county, misdemeanants are not dealt ... the punishment that necessarily fits the crime, because of lack of bed space,” Sheriff Donny Youngblood said when he took office in 2007.

 A new, 790-bed jail facility at Lerdo, which by one estimate will cost about $143.5 million, ought to go a long way toward rectifying the problem.

The money comes with three big catches. One, the Corrections Standards Authority, a division of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, requires that Kern County come up with $37 million in matching funds. Where that money comes from is anyone’s guess. One option is piggy-backing onto a county highway-construction bond.

Two, the Lerdo jail must add a re-entry facility where prisoners in their final months of incarceration can get job training, anger management help, substance abuse counseling and other assistance preparing them for the transition home.

Three, the state will be part-owner of the new facility, and state officials will probably send state prison inmates in their final months of incarceration to the re-entry facility for transition prior to release. Officials in other counties, most notably Orange, have balked at that proviso, but Kern officials don’t seem overly concerned.

The state funding, which comes from Assembly Bill 900, will help pay for 10,326 new jail beds across the state.

Kern County must now put together a plan to fund and build the facility. If that plan passes muster, the provisional funding could be confirmed Sept. 18.

This is good news, not only because the overall situation at Lerdo is dismal, but because the program gives counties the means to teach life skills to transitioning prisoners. Some criminals may never “get it,” but enough of them should to make it worthwhile.