Public Safety

Plan To Reduce Overcrowding Will Move Prisoners To County Jails

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published September 19, 2011 at 2:24 AM PDT

This story was published more than 12 years ago.

The Las Colinas Detention Facility serves as the primary point of intake for women prisoners in San Diego County.

The San Diego County Sheriff’s office estimates about 300 women prisoners will serve their sentence in county jail instead of state prison. It’s part of the plan to relieve overcrowding in state prisons.

San Diego’s only women’s jail, Las Colinas, is crumbling and overcrowded; County grand juries have called it a disgrace for years. A new $220-million replacement jail is now in the works, but won’t be finished until 2015.

Commander John Ingrassia of San Diego’s sheriff’s department says more than 640 women are currently held in Las Colinas, which has a court ordered capacity of 500.

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Ingrassia says the county has converted buildings to increase capacity.

"On that end it is overcrowded, but every inmate is in a bed," said Ingrassia. "But you also have issues with the age of the facility, so the medical area is inadequate. Once we have the new facility on line we should have close to 900 inmates - maybe a little more - but we should have 1,216 beds."

Ingrassia says there are technically enough beds for 900 women at Las Colinas, but conditions will be inadequate until the first phase of the new jail comes on line.

Public Safety

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.