Overcrowded Prisons

Pubdate: Sun, 04 Feb 2007
Source: Spartanburg Herald Journal (SC)
Contact: opinion@shj.comCopyright: 2007 The Spartanburg Herald-Journal
Website: http://www.goupstate.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/977
Author: Monica Mercer

LAW ENFORCEMENT DEALS WITH CROWDED JAIL
Spartanburg County Detention Facility Director Larry Powers Says He Wishes the Movie "Field of Dreams" Had Never Been Made.For him, the phrase, "If you build it, they will come," just hit a bit too close to home, since he figured at the time it had more to do with jails than baseball fields."When they built this jail, they all came," Powers said with a sardonic grin.
The county's current facility on California Avenue was constructed in 1994 to remedy chronic overcrowding. Yet within a month, every bed had been filled, and within four years the county was back to square one with the jail population again exceeding space. Today, there is an average of 800 inmates at any given time with room for only 586 at the main facility and its two small annexes.
As County Council prepares to review administration's recommendation to address overcrowding by essentially doing the same thing as in the past -- expanding the jail to the tune of $33.5 million -- county law enforcement officials continue to grapple with ways to curb the local jail population while admitting that the need for more space is unavoidable.Powers said the state Department of Corrections has for years pressured local jails to alleviate overcrowding, but because the jails in counties with larger populations such as Charleston have always been much worse, the state is just now honing in onSpartanburg.
Yet overcrowding at local jails -- which is a national problem according to the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Labor Statistics -- doesn't necessarily coincide with more people committing more crimes, Powers said. According to the most recent crime statistics, all reported crimes in the city of Spartanburg decreased by 7 percent in 2006 compared with 2005.
A better explanation for jail overcrowding might be in the more mundane details -- for instance, Powers said, when Spartanburg County municipalities over the years "decided they didn't want to be in the prisoner business anymore" and gradually turned things over to the county jail. Add to that the nonviolent offenders who often sit in jail longer than necessary because they can't make bail -- currently there are about 100 such local cases -- and court systems unable to adjudicate cases fast enough."All these things affect the jail population, not necessarily that there are more prisoners," Powers said.
In 2005, County Council requested a jail overcrowding committee be formed to study such issues, and 7th Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy, who also leads the committee, said the group has made headway in streamlining the process of moving inmates through the jail.Gowdy said the county's three circuit judges have been generous in hearing criminal cases even when criminal court is not in session, often giving up vacation time to do so. He also advocated for Gordon Cooper, a Master-in-Equity who normally hears only those cases referred by circuit judges, to be designated a "special" circuit judge. Cooper now hears probation cases, which frees up circuit judges for trials and guilty pleas.Such measures over the past year, said Powers, have helped inmates get through the system in weeks rather than months.
The home detention program -- which allows offenders to be monitored at home rather than sit in jail -- also has modestly lightened the burden. Of the 360 people who have gone through the program, only 102 have been sent back to jail for violations. Six participants have escaped and have yet to be caught.But overcrowding persists.The committee made additional "very specific suggestions" for remedies in its 2005 report to Council. Most have not been implemented yet, Gowdy said.There was the idea to create a county fund where money could be posted on bonds under $10,000 so "inmates can be released and are not held unnecessarily at county expense."
And at the top of the list was expansion of the jail, which Gowdy called "essential.""It's not that (Council) disagreed with our findings, it's just a multi-million-dollar decision to make more bed space and expand a jail," Gowdy said. "We're doing everything we know how to do, and we still have an overcrowding problem."
In a recent interview, Council Chairman Jeff Horton agreed."We've purged that entity there as best we can," Horton said. "The fact is, as the community grows, the population of the jail will grow, too."

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I've chosen a story about a local jail to illustrate the problem with overcrowded prisons since the problem exists from the very top of the system down to the bottom. California is now trying to transfer about 5000 inmates to private out of states prisons to avoid a federal court lawsuit that would probably take over the state prison system. Texas, with the highest rate of incarceration in the nation, and which had its prisons under Court supervision for years until it embarked on the world's largest prison-building spree, now claims that it is 4,000 beds short of meeting its demand for prisons. What is going on?

In 1980, when Reagan decided to be tough on crime rather than being smart about crime, the total prison polulation in the US was about 400,000 people. Now it is over 2 Million, and almost 0.5 Million of those (more than the entire prison population in 1980) are in jail for drug offenses, most of them non-violent. Each year there are about 750,000 arrests (not citations) for marijuan offenses, over 80% of which are for mere possession. Overall crime rates have gone done significantly during the same period; but it seems that the fewer criminals there are, the more there are that get imprisoned.

It costs at least $30,000 a year to keep a prisoner in prison; Texas's prison budget four years ago was over $2 Billion a year. Multiply this out, add in the lack of school funding and health care and is if its worth the cost.

Why are drug users and sellers in jail instead of in rehab or community service? Drug Courts have spread nationwide quite successfully, but the total number is still woefully small. California's diversion program is working, but not covering enough people. The Federal prisons (where over 60% of the prisoners are there for drug offenses) has a highly effective rehab and halfway house program, but few (if any) states have followed its lead.

Even if you are not willing to legalize or decriminalize drug possession or use, ask yourself in expensive prisons (where HIV and Hepatitis C infection rates approach 40% and an inmate has over a 20% chance of being raped during his first week's confinement) are the right answer to the drug problem. Why not drug courts or therapeutic probation (instead od punative)? Why not house arrest or community service for possession offenses.

The next time you pay high taxes to support prisons, ask why your states doesn't have enough money for schools or health care.