Board authorizes $20k allocation for inmate taxi ride service

RIVERSIDE - Riverside County supervisors agreed today to allocate $20,000 to keep a transportation program alive that prevents inmates released from the Southwest Detention Center from being left stranded, loitering outside homes and businesses.

Riverside Inmate Destination Endeavor -- or RIDE -- was implemented in June as a pilot project recommended by former Supervisor Jeff Stone.

According to sheriff's officials, the initial $25,000 earmarked for RIDE has been exhausted, and to keep it going to May 31, another $20,000 was needed.

''The program has worked admirably,'' Board of Supervisors Chairman Marion Ashley said. ''It may have use at our other detention centers.''

Sheriff Stan Sniff or a member of his executive team is expected to report in January whether the program has had the desired effect.

French Valley residents complained to the board in May that they had been harassed and threatened by individuals released penniless and without a way to get home -- or back to wherever they came from prior to being booked into the Southwest Detention Center.

Stone said his office had received numerous complaints from Third District constituents who had run into former inmates along Auld Road, state Route 79 and other passages in the vicinity of the jail, which is located at 30755 Auld Road, a couple blocks from French Valley Airport.

Under the RIDE project, sheriff's personnel at the jail provide taxi vouchers that cover the cost of a one-way trip within the area to an inmate's home or preferred destination between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. The board's initial $25,000 allocation was supposed to last a full year, funding an estimated 833 vouchers, but demand apparently exceeded what was needed.

Meadowbrook resident Gary Grant recommended that the county put more pressure on cities whose law enforcement agencies are responsible for apprehending the individuals to share the cost burden associated with RIDE.

''If a city has people they've put in, that city should have the responsibility to take them back through their process,'' Grant said.

According to Assistant Sheriff Steve Thetford, the state's public safety realignment law, enacted in October 2011, has left sheriff's personnel battling with capacity constraints in a system with less than 4,000 inmate beds available.

Under realignment, individuals convicted of ''non-violent, non-serious'' and non-sexually oriented crimes can be incarcerated in local jails to serve out their sentences instead of prison, taking up scarce local correctional space.

A 20-year-old federal court decree mandates that the county have a jail bed for every detainee, or selectively release inmates to make room for incoming ones.

In 2012 and 2013, the sheriff's department released 16,276 detainees from custody because of overcrowding. According to Sgt. Mike Manning, 10,772 inmates have been released from the county's five jails so far this year.