The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Sheriff C.T. Woody Jr. said they are among the roughly one-third of
inmates he believes don't really belong in the city's aging,
overcrowded jail. The jail, designed to house 882, routinely has more
than 1,500 inmates, more than 450 of whom are awaiting trial.

"I've got a lot of family, a lot of connections," says Tobias
Johnson, who spent six weeks in jail last fall when he was unable to
come up with $150 for a bond on charges of trespassing and possessing
marijuana.

The trespassing charge -- he fell asleep in the lobby of VCU Medical
Center -- eventually was dropped. He got a suspended sentence of 30
days for the marijuana charge and walked out of court a free man
after his brief trial.

He stayed out for three weeks. Then, he was charged with trespassing
at Gilpin Court -- he'd just been robbed of $40, he rattles off, and
was on his way to pick up some clothes. If he can come up with $75,
he could wait outside jail for his March 11 trial.

"You know what relentless is? I've been relentless, trying to get out
of here," he said, in the intense mile-a-minute way he outlines his
career as a banker, a machinist and a backhoe operator, or talks
about his plans to go to law school in Georgia and become an
accountant, or how he used to be in the care of the Richmond
Behavioral Health Authority until he missed a doctor's appointment
and an appointment with a pastor -- and the story continues.

Johnson, 43, finally managed to find a bed in the jail's tough F-1
tier after six weeks of sleeping on the floor in the crowded
dormitory cell. He's been robbed twice of the snacks he'd scrimped to
buy. Had four fights. Won two.

. . .

Like Johnson, a one-time All-Metro guard from the powerhouse
Armstrong-Kennedy High School basketball team of 1984, about 40
percent of those low-bond inmates are in jail on trespassing,
disorderly conduct or other nuisance misdemeanor charges, the Times-
Dispatch review found.

About one-third are there for minor drug offenses -- possession of
small amounts of marijuana or crack cocaine, usually. The rest are
there for a range of driving, petit larceny, bad check or misdemeanor
assault charges.

It costs taxpayers $374 a week to keep them in jail.

The costs for Johnson, whose 18 trips to jail include charges ranging
from cocaine possession to prostitution to trespassing, are higher
because of the three prescriptions he takes for a chronic medical
condition.

"I do think it is worth looking again at the very low bonds and
asking what's the point," said Commonwealth's Attorney Michael N.
Herring, who said he was startled by the newspaper's findings.

"Somebody who is getting a $300 bail, should we be asking me as a
taxpayer to spend thousands of dollars to keep him in jail awaiting
trial?" Herring asked.

"But then what if this is a person who is homeless or who is
challenged or ill; do we want to put him out with no place to go in
the winter? . . . If you put them on the street, they'll be
trespassing again in a few weeks or maybe be subject to someone who
is a predator."

. . .

General District Court Judge David E. Cheek says setting a bond is
one of the hardest decisions a judge makes.

"It's very complicated and it is a case-by-case thing," he said.
"You've got to weigh Eighth Amendment rights, and the thought that
someone could spend a long time in jail but be found innocent against
the possibility that someone will be hurt if they are on the street."

The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bans excessive bail as
well as cruel and unusual punishment.

Woody says many men and women behind bars with very low bonds don't
need to be incarcerated at all. He's calling for alternatives,
including check-ins with the city's pretrial services officers or
electronic-monitoring devices.

"Some people don't have the financial means to post a bond, no matter
the amount of the bond," he said.

A Times-Dispatch review of nearly 1,500 inmate records from a single
day in December found more than a dozen behind bars because they
couldn't afford a $30, $50, $80 or $100 bail bond.

It discovered 50 more who couldn't afford $150 to $300 bonds.

The review also found:
# Jose Sanchez, who couldn't pay $50 to get out of jail after his
arrest for driving on a revoked license Nov. 24. At his trial three
weeks later, he was assessed a $100 fine.
# Alice Graves, unable to find $30 to get out of jail after her Nov.
10 arrest for trespassing. She was found guilty a month later and
sentenced to two months in jail.
# Michael McCarter, who couldn't afford a $100 bond after his Aug. 30
arrest on a hit-and-run charge. At his Jan. 31 trial, he was
sentenced to 12 months in jail.

. . .

Bail bondsmen don't always want the headache of writing small bonds,
and sometimes defendants know they're guilty and decide they might as
well get an early start on their sentence -- time spent waiting for
trial is credited against sentences, defense attorney Stephen
Benjamin said.

Many of the low-bond inmates have mental illnesses, and the number of
them in jail is yet another sign of how the area tends to deal with
the troubled by locking them up, Benjamin said.

"And Richmond City Jail is not a pleasant place, but it is warm and
they do serve three meals a day," he said. "For some people, that
looks better than going back on the street and being homeless and
cold and hungry."

That's not his situation, inmate Johnson said. He's been homeless,
yes. But he's got people, lots of people, on the outside -- just not
for posting bonds.

"I've called my friends, but they lose patience," he said. "I know
one girl, she's a real estate broker, she told my mother she'd do
what she could to help. I want to say, 'Pay my bond, pay my bond.'"
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-
RTD-2008-02-29-0135.html