The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

An analysis by Grits of data from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards found that despite declining crime over the same period, county jail populations increased 27% between 1995 and 2005. Almost all of that increase stemmed from more frequent detention of defendants before trial. In other words, there are many more defendants who can't make bail these days in county lockups. Particularly for misdemeanants, just a decade ago many of those defendants would have been released on personal bond so taxpayers wouldn't pay to house them.

These trends represent harsher decisions by judges about when defendants should be released on bond -- another case where being tough on crime amounts to being tough on taxpayers, with little identifiable public safety benefit. A decade ago, pretrial defendants made up 30.3% of the statewide Texas jail population. Today the number is more than half, at 53%.

What does that mean to the average defendant? Judges are more likely to require them to put up bail than ten years ago, when more low-level offenders would have been released on 'personal bond,' or a 3% bail fee and a promise to appear. Now if they can't pay, more defendants just sit in jail awaiting trial.

With so many jurisdictions operating local lockups that are bursting at the seams, it makes little sense to continue the trend (unless, perhaps, you're a bail bondsman). Here are the incarceration rates for pretrial detainees at Texas' largest county jails:

What percentage of Texas county jail inmates are awaiting trial? In 1995, just 30% of Texas county jail inmates statewide were incarcerated awaiting trial. As of January 1, 2008 that figure had risen to 53%. In many counties the figure is much higher: County

Total percentage pretrial defendants

Misdemeanor and state jail felony pretrial defendants

Statewide

53%

10%

Bexar

58%

21%

Dallas

67%

15%

Harris

56%

12%

Tarrant

61%

18%

Travis

65%

24%

The same pattern repeats itself around the state in jails big and small. Pretrial detention decisions by judges drive most local jail overcrowding problems.

There are few substantive barriers to solving the problem, only ideological ones. One year ago Nacogdoches County had to ship prisoners to other jurisdictions because of overcrowding, but has eliminated its problem entirely by reducing pretrial detention. County commissioners invited USDOJ consultants to assess their situation, and DOJ ³told commissioners the jail was being 'over-used,' and that more innovative programs could be implemented so that non-violent offenders 'never occupy a bed in the jail.'"

In response, over the past year Nacogdoches has been doing just that. As of the most recent monthly jail population report, their 292-bed jail was less than 2/3 full. In December 2006, a whopping 68% of the Nacogdoches County Jail population was made up of pretrial offenders; by January 1, 2008, that number had declined to just 34.5% of the jail population.

(I had a chance to speak briefly with Nacogdoches County Judge Joe English at the event who confirmed that their once full jail now had more than 100 empty beds! He said that public meetings where the DOJ consultants focused on pretrial incarceration decisions by judges caused the local judiciary to rethink its bonding policies. I'll be following up to get more detail about exactly what they did there and how they went about it - that's a real success story)

That same jail overcrowding solution will work for nearly every jurisdiction in Texas with full jails. If Bexar County, for example, could lower its percentage of pretrial detainees to 34.5% from the current 58%, it would reduce the jail population by 935 inmates, eliminating the short-term crisis entirely.

A county sheriff pulled me aside later to agree with me, and said he believed that too many judges these days were improperly using bail as punishment, which I thought was a good point. There must be some motive that explains these numbers, and that fits as well as any.

Tyler District Judge Cynthia Kent reacted negatively to my comments in the following panel, claiming that when she'd tried to use more personal bonds in her own court, 70% of defendants didn't show back up! However, I've reason to think that figure is inaccurate or skewed. Another conference participant leaned over to me at that point and declared that he previously ran a federal pretrial services division where use of personal bonds is much more widespread. He told me his division experienced around a 5% no-show rate (making me think I need to learn more about the federal pretrial system to see what can be adapted for local use). In Harris County, those deemed lowest risk by pretrial services have about a 3% no-show rate.

Speaking to Judge Kent later, it turns out that their local District Attorney stridently opposes creating a Pretrial Services division in Smith County, which means that there's literally no infrastructure there to support the use of personal bonds. Even so, county officials still want to build a bigger jail! If it were me, I'd invest in a new pretrial services division long before I spent money on bricks and mortar. (UPDATE: A commenter tells me Smith County DOES have a pretrial services division, it's just unpopular with judges and other local officials.)

The other big focus of my talk was the large number of mentally ill people filling up local jails, but the truth is solutions to that problem are more difficult to come by and likely will arrive much farther in the future. Reducing pretrial detention is a solution that can work today, immediately. For county officials looking to solve a short-term jail overcrowding crisis, there's little doubt this is the quickest, least painful solution. The question really is not can they solve the problem, but are local judges and county officials willing to do so? ______________________

http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2008/02/fabelo-texas-jail-growth-outst
ripping.html

Friday, February 08, 2008

Fabelo: Texas jail growth outstripping prisons

Dr. Tony Fabelo, Texas' premier criminal justice statistician, has been a busy man lately, including serving yesterday as the featured speaker at the Bexar County jail overcrowding symposium. He's put a copy of his presentation online, entitled Managing Jail Population Growth in Texas: The State and Local Challenges.

A few highlights:

Between 2000 and 2007, Texas rate of incarceration in prisons actually declined by 9.4%, while the rate of people incarcerated in county jails rose by 4.3%. (Slide 19) This was a period of major population growth and declining crime, so for jails' rate to continue to rise over that period is pretty significant.

Incarceration rates in the largest counties over the same period varied widely, indicating that the actions of local decisionmakers accounted for much of the variation in outcomes. Here are the changes in jail incarceration rates between 2000-2007 for Texas' five largest counties (Slide 20):

Harris: 15.72%
Dallas: -13.46%
Tarrant: -6.02%
Bexar: 7.54%
Travis: -15.08%

Fabelo corroborated my assessment earlier in the day that pretrial detention is driving county jail growth. While overall jail population increased 18.6% between 2000-2007, he said, the number of pretrial detainees increased 49.2% over the same period. (Slide 21)

He pointed out that more than 13,000 jail beds are either currently planned or under construction, but said he didn't see the need for them based on crime patterns. (Slide 27)

See his whole presentation, the first part of which included a summary of legislative actions in 2007 that affected jail crowding. Also check out more of Fabelo's Texas' related research at the Justice Center website of the Council of State Governments.