Need For New Jail In Question
A shrinking number of inmates in the King County WA Jail is bucking prior forecasts and raising new questions about whether Seattle and its suburbs will need to build their own jail in 2013. Report from the Seattle P-I.
Seattle and its neighbors to the north and east have been studying where to build a 640-bed, $110 million jail based on King County’s warnings last year that it would no longer have room for misdemeanor offenders in three years. Cities in South King County also are collaborating on a new jail to be built in Des Moines. But instead of growing, the county jail’s daily population is decreasing, by almost 6 percent during the last eight months, according to jail staff. The average daily population also declined 4 percent between 2007 and 2008, according to figures from a King County councilmember …
“We would love not to build a new jail. I think at this point, we’re really waiting for King County and whether they think the change is enough that they would have space for the cities to stay,” said Catherine Cornwall, a Seattle senior policy analyst involved with the cities’ plans. “Until we have something in writing, in order to be responsible, we have to keep continuing forward with our planning effort,” she said. Prior studies have shown the downtown jail, with an average inmate census of 2,324 in 2008, running out of room …
Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata, a skeptic of the city’s need for a new jail, said he’s optimistic that the current trend could be maintained through further use of alternatives to incarceration. Seattle and King County have invested in jail alternatives that steer inmates into treatment and reduce their chances of re-offending. Seattle’s share of misdemeanor population has declined 40 percent since 2001 through programs such as community courts, electronic home monitoring and special day-reporting options for low-level transient offenders who repeatedly wind up in jail because they miss court dates …
County Councilwoman Kathy Lambert, who chairs the committee on Law, Justice and Health and Human Services … doesn’t support ending the cities’ jail contracts yet because she thinks more more inmates with mental illness or substance abuse could be moved into programs. Still, she thinks the cities will need their own jail, but that it could be downsized if they partner with the county in sharing alternative programs and bed space. “If we’re able to work together, hopefully it’s the last jail we will need for many, many , many years,” Lambert said.
There is a great deal more detail and background in the full article at the P-I.
California, County-City Issues, Overcrowding, Prison and Jail Construction, WA King County, Washington