L.A. County Makes Room for Female Prisoners

CASTAIC, Calif. — Supervisors in Los Angeles County approved spending $2.3 million to design an expansion at Pitchess Detention Center.

The $136 million expansion will add a 1,000-bed housing unit for female inmates to the center. Plans call for the construction of a medium-security barracks located at the site of a former medical facility behind the center’s administrative offices. Officials expect the design to be completed within six months.

Work is also scheduled to begin soon on a $113 million renovation at the Sybil Brand Institute, a shuttered women’s prison in Monterey Park. The facility will be reopened to hold another 1,000 female inmates. The institute was closed in 1997 due to disrepair and insufficient funding.

Currently, the county’s only operational women’s facility is Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, which houses more than 2,100 female prisoners. Corrections officials would like to convert the jail into a maximum-security men’s facility to alleviate overcrowding in the jail system.

The expansion of Pitchess Detention Center and the renovation of the Sybil Brand Institute are scheduled for completion in 2010.