"There's not enough room. They'll let me out." That's what a gang member with a long history of violent crime told me last week when I took him to jail.

More and more often, police officers hear criminals we arrest tell us they aren't afraid to break the law.

Gang members and other criminals know that even if they commit a serious crime, the police will have to let them back on the streets because there is no place to hold them in the Orange County Jail.

The same problem exists in Juvenile Halls, where 65% of arrested gang members are sent.

We recently arrested a juvenile gang member who had an assault rifle. There was no room in Juvenile Hall, so he was released back to his home with a mere curfew.

He still poses a threat to the safety of the community.

Jail and Juvenile Hall overcrowding frequently hinder our gang investigations. Many gang members released on a promise to appear in court immediately begin intimidating victims and witnesses who could testify against them.

The result is that fewer gang members are convicted and removed from the streets.

It's sad but true. Each week, more than 850 criminals are released back into Orange County communities immediately after arrest or before the end of their sentences because there is no room in the jail.

These releases occur because the ACLU convinced a federal court judge to limit the number of prisoners allowed in the housing area of the Central Men's Jail and to require that each prisoner receive a bed within 24 hours or be released.

Police records show that many criminals are arrested again almost immediately after they go free.

According to a recent Orange County Sheriff's Department study, more than 5,400 criminals since 1987 have been arrested committing crimes when they should have been in jail.

Because criminologists have found that the average criminal commits 10 to 20 crimes before he is arrested, we can safely estimate that between 54,000 and 108,000 crimes could have been prevented during this period by having a new jail.

Criminology studies confirm what Orange County police officers know firsthand: The best way to reduce crime is to remove criminals from the streets.

Stephen Klein and Michael Caggiano found in a Bureau of Justice statistics study that more than 50% of the released prisoners they tracked over a 36-month period were arrested again for new crimes: "Almost all of those were convicted and incarcerated--often for serious crimes (such as murder, rape, kidnaping, assault, robbery and burglary)," the study found.