EX-INMATES MISSING CHANCE AT MONEY.

Byline: Michelle Rester Staff Writer

Of the 300,000 former inmates eligible to share $27 million awarded in a class-action lawsuit last year, only 30,000 have filed claims for the money, attorneys said.

The remaining 270,000 have until Sept. 20 to file before they lose their rights to the settlement money, said Barry Litt, the attorney behind the largest class-action lawsuit against Los Angeles County.

The case was settled in August 2001, on behalf of more than 300,000 former inmates overly detained and/or illegally strip searched by employees at Los Angeles County jails between 1996 and 2001, Litt said.

Litt says the impetus for the lawsuit was the alarming number of inmates who appeared in court and had a judge say they were free to go. But instead of going home, they were sent back to jail for hours, days or weeks, and subjected to at least one additional body cavity strip search.

Some of these people, officials say, had been falsely arrested to begin with but were put through the ordeal nonetheless. Now with only a few weeks left before the deadline to claim the money, Litt and others are encouraging those eligible to file the forms needed to share in the pool of money.

``There are far too many who haven't filed claims,'' said Julia White, Litt's senior paralegal. ``Too many are going to lose out on things they earned the hard way.''

White says they've sent notices to the last known addresses of the thousands eligible for the settlement money, but a 5-foot by 5-foot room filled with return notices is getting more full by the day.

Meanwhile, the county Board of Supervisors has picked up the strip search issue and recently approved a $150,000 settlement to a woman illegally strip searched when she was eight months pregnant.

She had been picked up on traffic warrants, her husband posted bail, but word of the bail did not make its way to the right people in time. As a result, the woman was taken to the women's jail downtown, where she had to endure the body search and shower, according to county documents.

Members of the Board of Supervisors - in particular, Supervisor Gloria Molina - have been demanding the name of the sheriff's employee who conducted the illegal strip search.

Sheriff's Department officials, however, say a name won't be released for at least two reasons. One is that the strip search happened a couple years ago and there is no way of finding out who performed the search because the woman was one of 50 in a lineup being checked by a dozen female deputies. And, although it was, attorneys say, against state law, it was still county policy to strip search any inmate coming into a housing unit as a protection to the general jail population.

The case has caused a bit of debate over the circumstances of when and where it is appropriate and legal to do body searches of inmates.

Soon after the pregnant woman's case was reported more than a year and a half ago, the county jails, at the urging of county attorneys, discontinued strip searches of all new, incoming inmates, jail officials said.

The head of the jail system says the edict is in place while sheriff's officials work on a new system that will help to better identify who is protected from the strip searches and who is not.

Inmates already in the system, however, are strip searched if they have to leave for a court appearance and then come back. But as for new inmates, no strip searches are being conducted, said Robert Hoffman, chief of the custody operations division.

Hoffman says he and others are worried about what this policy means for the safety of inmates and for deputies. Last year, there were at least 270 stabbings in Central Jail - three included deputies. There is no way of knowing, however, which of those came as a result of weapons that went undetected. And when word gets out to regular offenders who may soon join the ranks of the jail system, more drugs and weapons could be smuggled in.

``We're concerned that we're heading down a real serious path,'' Hoffman said. ``We need to protect those inmates from those types of assaults.''

Hoffman says the Sheriff's Department commissioned a study of 51 counties statewide to find out how they have interpreted state strip search laws.

``Twenty-seven responded, and 26 do exactly what we've been doing for the last (several) years,'' he said.

Several changes in jail-related strip search policies have been changed since the class-action lawsuit was settled. One of the most significant, officials say, is that inmates released by a judge are sent home straight from the courthouse and do not go back to jail.