Citing a downward trend in the county jail’s population, the Seattle City Council on Friday asked King County WA for a new 10-year agreement to hold its misdemeanor offenders.  Report from Seattle P-I.

If King County agrees to the proposal, it would likely end or indefinitely postpone planning for a new municipal jail, initially slated for construction by 2013.   In a letter sent Friday to King County Executive Ron Sims and King County Council Chairman Dow Constantine, Seattle officials cited public “confusion” about the need for jail space.   “One way to resolve it would be for you to offer the cities a new long-term agreement. Another would be for you to acknowledge that you cannot do so, notwithstanding any recent short-term trends. We would much prefer the former, but the latter would be an improvement over the status quo,” the letter said …

King County has warned it would no longer have room for the city’s misdemeanors due to projected increases in the felony population. After realizing that the jail would still have space after that deadline, the King County Council passed an ordinance last year declaring its mission to continue as a regional provider of jail services and directing the County Executive to extend jail contracts for one to years for misdemeanors, which include offenses such as DUI, domestic violence, or theft. The City Council’s letter said that a contract shorter than 10 years would not be enough to halt plans for a new jail …

The jail’s population has been shrinking and falling short of earlier projections. Bookings for drug offenses from Seattle police alone dropped 34 percent between 1998 and 2008, according to figures from the council’s Jail Capacity Advisory Study Group.  Some have argued that the dip in the number of inmates could be maintained through increased use of alternative programs aimed at preventing drug offenders from committing new crimes.

vericatrajkova County-City Issues, Prison and Jail Construction, WA King County, Washington

The Kansas City Council on Thursday approved a deal to send city inmates to a Jackson County detention facility downtown.  Report from KansasCity.com.

The ordinance authorizes city staff to proceed with a regional jail concept, committing $3.1 million annually to house 150 prisoners a day in the county facility. The city will also provide money for construction costs estimated at $2.1 million. The city hopes to save $1 million in annual city jail operations, and the aging Municipal Correctional Institution will close.

vericatrajkova County-City Issues, MO Jackson County, MO Kansas City, Missouri, Regional Jails

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.

vericatrajkova California, County-City Issues, Overcrowding, Prison and Jail Construction, WA King County, Washington

When the Springfield OR jail opens this fall, about $200,000 will vanish from the coffers of the Lane County Jail in Eugene.  Reported by the Eugene Register-Guard.

That’s how much Springfield pays the county annually to reserve five beds in the jail, — beds that Springfield no longer will need. The loss to the county, if not recovered elsewhere, may mean a decline in service at the county jail.  “That will be an impact to us,” Lane County Sheriff Russ Burger said. “We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to make that up.”

But the county could find itself in an even trickier position: a bidding war with Springfield to lease out jail beds.  The jail relies heavily on renting out beds to supplement the money it gets from the county general fund: Of the county’s $28 million correctional budget, which includes the jail and many other programs, more than $18 million comes from outside sources, including renting space in the jail.  The money the county earns through leasing beds helps cover some of the cost of running the 127 beds that the county provides for local offenders.  “For us, (renting beds) is an absolute necessity,” Burger said. “We would not be able to house as many local offenders if we didn’t lease beds out.”

The U.S. Marshals Service pays the county about $4.5 million a year to rent beds for federal violators. Eugene pays about $800,000 to reserve beds in the county jail. Another $4.5 million comes from the state to rent beds for certain categories of offenders and to fund other correctional work, said Capt. Doug Hooley, county adult corrections division commander.

Competition from Springfield would obviously be unwelcome.

vericatrajkova County-City Issues, County-State Issues, Federal Payments, OR Lane County, Oregon, Prison and Jail Construction, US Marshall's Service

Plans for Fulton County GA to take over Atlanta’s jail resurfaced Thursday, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Attorneys involved in the ongoing effort to improve conditions inside the Fulton County Jail talked about a plan where the county would make an offer to the city to operate its jail, said Emmet Bondurant, an attorney who attended the meeting.   About 1,044 inmates are housed daily at the Atlanta jail —- two-thirds of them federal or Fulton County inmates, city auditors say. Thursday’s meeting was held in the offices of Senior U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Shoob, who is overseeing a federal court order to improve the jail …

“This appears to be a serendipitous opportunity,” said Bondurant, former chairman of a commission that pushed for the idea four years ago. “[The city] has a facility too large for its own needs and the [county] has a facility that is too small.”  Greg Giornelli, the city’s chief operating officer, said Atlanta is willing to listen to any county proposals.  “We are considering all options related to the city jail,” he said Thursday. “However, a deal with Fulton County is particularly compelling on a number of levels.”

City officials were reluctant to consider the idea in 2005 and 2006, but the concept is more compelling now, for several reasons. Atlanta, like most big cities, is suffering financially and its corrections department budget is $38.5 million. A recent internal audit of that department found it overspent its corrections budget six of the past seven years.

vericatrajkova County-City Issues, Economic Issues, GA Atlanta City, GA Fulton County, Georgia

An audit released by City Hall this morning shows that Dallas TX taxpayers could have saved about $2.2 million if the city had done a better job updating its jail contract with the county.  Report from Dallas Morning News.

Each year, the city and the county enter into an agreement in which the city hands over about $7 million for the county to handle its prisoners. According to the audit, the city hasn’t revised that agreement since 1997. And the agreement doesn’t account for “actual jail operating expenditures,” the audit stated.  So even as the number of city prisoners in the jail has fallen, from more than 85,000 in 2006 to about 61,000 last year, the city’s costs have increased.

Had the city revised its agreement with the county to tie costs to the number of prisoners held, it “would have save the City $2,161,787 from Fiscal Year (FY) 2006 through FY 2008,” the audit stated.

vericatrajkova County-City Issues, TX Dallas County, Texas

A full day of mediation failed to produce a new city-county jail agreement between Tulsa County and its largest city. But retired Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Daniel Boudreau, who served as the mediator, said late Wednesday that 11 hours of negotiations yielded considerable progress.  The Tulsa World reports:

The main sticking point has been whether the city should begin paying a direct fee to house its inmates in the Tulsa Jail and, if so, how much.  The haggling began in March 2008, when the county first proposed that the city begin paying $54.13 per inmate per day to house its inmates in the jail.   Under the former agreement, which expired Nov. 30, the city paid no direct fee to house as many as 116 municipal inmates a day in the jail. In return, the city provided certain assets and services to the county for a nominal fee or at no cost …

County officials have argued that a direct fee is necessary because of the rising cost of maintaining and refurbishing the jail.  In addition, they say, the assets and services provided by the city under the old agreement have no current value to the Tulsa County Criminal Justice Authority, which oversees operation of the jail.

vericatrajkova County-City Issues, OK Tulsa County, Oklahoma

South Tucson owes Pima County AZ more than $500,000 for housing South Tucson prisoners in the county jail, and has been delinquent in its payments going back more than a decade.  Report from the Arizona Morning Star.

Faced with making cuts to compensate for lost tax revenue, county officials now are pressing the tiny city to come up with a payment plan and threatening to start charging interest on the overdue amount.  But South Tucson City Manager Enrique Serna said the city has no way to pay because it’s facing the same drop in revenue that everyone else is. He said South Tucson needs to make good on its debt, but the money just isn’t there right now.

South Tucson has accumulated the debt even though the county twice has bought property from the city and written down the debt — by $555,000 in 2000 and again by another $220,000 in 2008.  Because the Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jail, is funded almost entirely from the county general fund, jail costs that aren’t paid by South Tucson must be made up by taxpayers …

Serna said the city has no way to pay in the next few years. The city faces a 20 percent shortfall in tax revenues and has cut wages for city workers.  “That definitely has to be paid for out of our general fund, and since we’re going uphill and against the wind, we’re just going to have to try to negotiate something, and they’re going to have to bear with us,” Serna said.

vericatrajkova AZ Pima County, Arizona, County-City Issues, Economic Issues

A new corrections audit raises questions whether Atlanta GA should continue to operate a city jail, according to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The report released Friday found that the city jail was over budget six of the last seven years —- despite two revenue-generating contracts to house prisoners for Fulton County and two federal agencies. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008, the department was about $4 million over budget, the audit found.  Both deals, the audit found, actually cost Atlanta way more money than they generate.  Atlanta houses inmates for Fulton County, the U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at a rate of $68 per day —- a loss of about $20 a day, the auditors found.

Leslie Ward, Atlanta’s internal auditor, said the city relies far too much on overtime because of chronic absenteeism among jailers. She also found that some space inside the jail isn’t properly used.  “I’m starting to wonder why we are in the jail business,” Ward said … About 1,044 inmates are housed in the Atlanta jail every day, two-thirds of them federal or Fulton County inmates, the audit found. “We need a holding cell, not a full-blown jail,” Councilman H. Lamar Willis said.

However,

Corrections Sgt. Ellis Williams, a leader of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees unit that represents corrections officials, criticized the audit, saying it was “willfully, deliberately and intentionally done” to encourage city leaders to close the jail.

vericatrajkova County-City Issues, Federal Payments, GA Atlanta City, ICE

Inmate bookings at the Sedgwick County KS Jail were down 9 percent last year, but it wasn’t clear whether the drop was caused by the county’s decision to charge cities for the use of the jail.

In Wichita, which last year ran up a bill of more than $3 million in jail fees that it has refused to pay, bookings were down 10.4 percent.   In the six other cities that haven’t been paying the fees, bookings were down an average of 8.6 percent.  In the nine cities that have paid the fees, bookings were up 7.7 percent …

[E]ven though the number of bookings has slowed, it was more than offset by an increase in the average length of stay of inmates.  “It’s still growing,” Sheriff Bob Hinshaw said of the jail’s daily population. “It’s just not growing as fast.”  Hinshaw said the number of bookings has slowed in recent years thanks to a new day-reporting center and other programs that offer alternatives to incarceration … Hinshaw said Sedgwick County continues to house nearly 300 of its inmates in other counties. Jail officials recently have been looking into the feasibility of using the recently closed Labette County Boot Camp or other unused state prison facilities as possible sources of extra jail beds. “We’re starting to run out of options,” Hinshaw said.

The story from the Wichita Eagle has a lot more information about the County’s dispute with its cities.

vericatrajkova County-City Issues, KS Sedgewick County, Kansas, Overcrowding