Yolo County To Decide on Jail Expansion

Many perhaps forget, from three years ago, that the carrot for the placement of the state’s re-entry facility was a promise of jail expansion to meet the expanded needs of Yolo County into the future.  When the economy collapsed, that funding source fell apart, but it has now been revived without the attachment of the re-entry facility.

The Yolo County Board of Supervisors will decide on Tuesday whether to apply for grant funding to expand the current jail capacity by up to 148 beds.  The grant would require a more than $4.6 million county match with an ongoing operational cost of nearly $2.5 million annually.

According to the county’s staff report, “On October 7, 2011, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) Corrections Standards Authority (CSA), issued a Request for Applications for AB 900 Phase II Construction or Expansion of County Jails funding. The County submitted an interest statement and was subsequently invited to apply for funding.”

On December 13, 2010, the board designated an ad-hoc subcommittee to work with staff on the feasibility of funding an expanded facility.  Since then the subcommittee and staff have worked to develop options for consideration.

The AB 109 Ad Hoc Subcommittee recommended a more modest 32 single and 64 double beds, that still carries with it a $4.1 million county match price tag but a more manageable $374,798 annual cost.  The AB 900 Project Team along with Sheriff Ed Prieto want the 148 beds.

Writes the staff report: “Assuming no change in the current justice system behavior, the projected increased average daily population (ADP) at full implementation of AB 109 in 2014 is estimated to be 314.  The 2011 ADP was 385.  Thus if the estimated ADP occurs, and absent changes in the local justice system, the projected ADP would be 699 by 2014. “

They add: “The current federal consent decree cap is 455 inmates.   The safest method of housing this increasingly long-term population is to add a housing unit that is designed to support this specific population in a more cost effective and efficient manner.”

According to the staff report, The AB 900 Project team comprised of representatives from the Sheriff’s Office, General Services, Probation, County Administrator’s Office, Needs Assessment Consultant, and the Architectural consultant recommend approval of option 4, and a full repurposing of Leinberger as recommended by action C.

Writes staff, “It is critical that state funds are received in order to provide much-needed program, service and facility improvements.  The best opportunity to receive approval of the application is to minimize the per bed cost of construction.  Option 4 provides the lowest cost per bed and at a reasonable increase in overall county match.  Option 4 provides an opportunity to improve meaningful in-custody programming that is not possible in the current facility. “

They add, “The experience of the Sheriff’s office since October 1 is that AB 109 impacts are significant and are thus far in line with the projected state parole revocations which impact the capacity of the jail to house offenders.  Lastly, the operational cost increases associated with the option can be mitigated by repurposing Leinberger and transitioning existing correctional officers to staff the expanded space. This recommendation is supported by the Sheriff-Coroner.”

However, the AB 109 subcommittee believes “that adding significant jail space at this time (with no guarantee that Leinberger be re-purposed upon completion of construction) may act as a disincentive to examining and implementing true change, using more effective (and cost-effective) alternative custody programming. Put simply, the current lack of available jail space forces consideration of alternative correctional strategies that the evidence indicates is likely to be more effective.”

In addition to the project costs, the staff report warns, “While these are known changes to operational costs, there remain some potential cost drivers which are unknown at this time.  The application precedes the long term AB 109 plan which may address some or all of the programming and treatment costs noted below.”

Potential future cost drivers associated with options three and four include:

VANGUARD ANALYSIS

The AB 109 subcommittee’s concern with adding jail capacity is exactly right, because not only will adding jail capacity at this time thwart true change, it will lock Yolo County to serving a given population.

We need to break down this proposal to understand the exact impacts.  First, there is no such thing as free money.  Yes, the state would be giving the county a rather sizable grant to expand the jail capacity.  However, the county would be asked to match between $4.15 and $4.69 million.

Sources told the Vanguard that the county’s total facility operation’s budget is about half of that, and this would require taking out 25-year bonds that would have to be paid back at interest.

But the problem goes beyond just that.  Capacity is not the end of expenses, and the grant would not pay to staff the additional capacity or provide services.  The county is estimating, for the 148-bed plan supported by the Sheriff, about $2.45 million in additional expenses.  That is money that the county lacks.  And as the county analysis makes clear, that is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

That gets us clearly to the next question – one of need.

The county did a needs assessment back in 2007 which was the basis for the grant application under the original provisions of AB 900 which required consideration of a re-entry facility.  Back then the projection was a continued growth in the average daily population.  However, that data for that study was cut off in 2007.

Sources tell the Vanguard that the ADP has dropped every year since then, and so the projections are inaccurate.  The county is apparently hoping to get a new assessment in time for the meeting on Tuesday, but the deadline for applications is Wednesday and so it is possible that the county will have to act without an updated needs assessment.

The need for the new jail capacity is predicated on the transfer of inmates from CDCR to County.   The idea is that those inmates will add to the county population and therefore the county needs to add capacity.

But that is actually a disputed view.  As we cited above, the AB 109 subcommittee and reformers believe that this is the time to reform the system.  The problem with adding capacity is that those beds will be filled – if not by Yolo county inmates, then by inmates from across the state as counties and CDCR struggle to find beds.

In short, if we build it, they will come – from somewhere.  The county will obviously prefer to keep local people in those beds, which will reduce any incentive to decrease the jail population.

Critics are concerned that the same forces – namely law enforcement – that created the conditions at CDCR will put pressure on the county to replicate those conditions locally.

The Sacramento Bee’s October 12, 2011 editorial suggests other ways forward.  As they argue, “If counties deal with it by simply expanding jail capacity, it will become a big, expensive flop.”  That is precisely what Yolo County is in danger of doing.

The county should be focusing on ways to reduce existing jail populations.

Writes the Bee, “The most promising avenue for reducing jail population while maintaining public safety is to look closely at people who have been arrested and accused of a crime, but who are awaiting trial. In the past, jails were roughly evenly divided between pretrial detainees and people who had been convicted and sentenced to a jail term. Now, sentenced offenders are a shrinking minority – 40 percent – of the Sacramento County jail population.”

There are a number of different categories here.

First, there are a number of people who are in our jail because they are waiting for placement in a drug treatment facility or Napa State Hospital, or some other alternative sentencing or treatment arrangement.  At times, the back-up for these services can take three to six months.

That is three to six months in a bed that could be better utilized.

Beyond that, we have a large number of people in custody that will never set foot in a state prison. Most of these people will be given probation, and released with time served, after some amount of months in custody.

We have all sorts of alternative custody arrangements with anything from GPS devices to supervised OR (own recognizance) to work programs.

As the Bee puts it, “Who, really, needs to be detained before trial, and who should be allowed to remain in the community while his or her case proceeds? Counties need to take a hard look at the risks arrestees pose to public safety while they await trial.”

The Bee adds, “In Sacramento County, 31 percent of the pretrial population has had no previous arrests, or only one arrest. Forty-three percent have had no prior convictions. Sixty-three percent were arrested for nonviolent property, drug or alcohol crimes. Most are local people and are not a flight risk.”

Why not identify these people early in the process and find a place other than the local jail for them to await trial?  Not only are most of these people low safety and flight risk, but keeping them in custody is detrimental to their future ability to avoid recidivism.

The Bee analyzed one of the problems that is keeping low-risk pretrial detainees in jail, and that is an over-reliance on bail.

Looking at Sacramento, the Bee found, “In the pool of 1,294 local pretrial detainees in Sacramento County, the 437 arrested in violent, sex or weapons- related cases are rightly held in jail without bond. But that leaves 812 people who a judge has said could be released if they paid bail, but remain in custody because they can’t pay. Bail in Sacramento County is extraordinarily high – only 9 percent of the 812 have had bail set under $20,000.”

As the Bee puts it: “The county needs to screen every person booked into county jail, and release low-risk individuals, with conditions such as home detention or regular phone checks to make sure they attend court hearings.”

We have not even gotten into the issue of local Yolo County policies that contribute to this problem, whether it is through overcharging, finding creative ways to give people felonies, or what – one consistent comment that we get from attorneys who work both sides of the river is that crimes that are charged as misdemeanors in Sacramento often get charged as felonies in Yolo County.

Now, we have been quoted chapter and verse from various representatives in the DA’s office, suggesting that we need tougher policies in Yolo County, but given the issues of capacity, that becomes more questionable.

The bottom line fear at this point is that building more capacity means that we will fill these beds either locally or from the state.  And if that is the case, we are missing the reform opportunity.

This is not free money, the county cannot afford to pay the additional operations costs and we should be putting more of the AB 109 money into prevention and treatment rather than punishment.