Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca announced recently that the facility at the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic may be expanded to house the growing inmate population.

The Castaic Town Council is concerned about this expansion, saying that it could bring more gang members to their area and more showdowns with rival gangs in the Santa Clarita Valley. Of course not all prison inmates are violent offenders or members of gangs, so this is a pretty broad statement.

There are several options for expansion, including adding more beds for high-risk inmates or adding an all-female facility. Also needed are people to fill the 1,000 deputy shortage within the Sheriff's Department.

Unless the Sheriff's Deparment wants to create an Escape From New York environment, where New York City was turned into a maximum-security prison where all inmates were left to fend for themselves, there is a clear need for more prisons for the inmates to be housed. Hopefully the Sheriff's Department will elect to house low-risk inmates at the Pitchess facility, since it is fairly close to existing housing developments.

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