If you’re convicted of a crime in Orange County, you can shell out thousands of dollars to be housed in Seal Beach’s fancy “pay to stay” jail, which made $365,000 in the last fiscal year by aggressively marketing its “work release, flat screen TVs, computer/media room, clean facility, new beds” to deep-pocketed criminals, who pay $100 a night to stay there rather than one of Orange County’s notoriously violent, dirty jails.
Seal Beach has a disproportionate number of violent and sexual offenders, especially rich wife-beaters.
From 2011 through 2015, people convicted of crimes involving violence, threats of violence or sex-related offenses made up more than 16% of the Seal Beach jail’s 326 paying customers. That was a higher proportion than any other city with a significantly-sized program. It housed twice as many inmates convicted of assault, sex crimes, battery, domestic violence or robbery compared with Anaheim, which is more than 10 times its size.
‘This is like paradise’: Seal Beach’s pay-to-stay program actively markets its jail, attracting deep-pocketed offenders
[Alysia Santo, Victoria Kim and Anna Flagg/LA Times]
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)