The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Groover was sentenced to 15 years in prison with 10 years suspended and five to serve. Since the 21-year-old had been in the county jail so long, he is serving only one year inside the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility. He will be released in June 2009.

Groover's case was one of the first Duggan addressed. He is now a poster child of sorts in Duggan's mind, representing the kind of inmate that shouldn't be taking up space in the county jail.

"We've moved these guys through the system by speeding up mental evaluations, reducing bonds and IDing those we can plea bargain with," said Duggan, a 54-year-old former public defender and Houston police officer.

Added Duggan: "We've also prioritized who we want in jail."

The jail should not be for first-time offenders or those caught using drugs, he said. It's meant as a temporary holding space for hardened, violent offenders before they are turned over to the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

In recent years, however, the jail has morphed into an extended-stay facility, which puts pressure on jail personnel to find space to squeeze in an ever-growing inmate population that waits on backlogged courts.

"You get inmates in here who are stressed and wondering about their situation, and the longer they are here the bolder they get," Jail Administrator Capt. Eddie Thompson said. "It's a safety issue more than anything else."

One of the things Rankin-Madison District Attorney Michael Guest first saw bogging down the system was the waiting list for Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield, which performs all of the state's mental evaluations.

"What we discovered is that there was an 18-month waiting period," Guest said. "So, we met with the judges and told them the current system wasn't working."

Guest brokered a deal to have a Flowood psychologist - already contracted by the state to perform mental evaluations - to take on Madison and Rankin counties' evaluations. Now, mental evaluations take two weeks at most.

Rankin County Circuit Court judges William Chapman and Samac Richardson could not be reached for comment.

Besides problems with crowding, too many inmates at the jail also drive up the county's medical costs.

"When you house some of these guys in excess of 400 days, some of them are going to get sick," Rankin County Sheriff Ronnie Pennington said. "And that means we have to drive them to the hospital. Sometimes it can last three to four days. It costs money, and there is nothing we can do about it."

Pennington said some inmates face serious illnesses like cancer, hepatitis C and diabetes.

"To house a healthy inmate is costly enough, but to take care of an inmate's cancer treatments, for example, is very costly," Duggan said. "The county has to take on those payments until we move them over to MDOC, for example. Then it becomes the state's problem. That's our goal."

Duggan is paid $80,000 and is one of nine ADAs in the district attorney's office.

Rankin County public defender Aafram Sellers said he appreciates what the DA's office is doing.

"I've had cases low on the docket, and they've called to see if we could work it out with a plea or a bond reduction," he said. "It's great for both sides. There's no point holding some of these guys for months on end when we can reduce a bond or work out a plea agreement and let them rehabilitate on the outside."

In Hinds County, the district attorney's office constantly battles inmate populations at the county's 594-capacity jail. But District Attorney Robert Schuler Smith does not have an attorney assigned to do what Duggan does.

"I think all assistant district attorneys should do what he does and mine do," Smith said. He points out that his office in the last year has shifted exponentially more inmates than Rankin's 125.

The latest U.S. Bureau statistics put Hinds County's population at about 250,000. Rankin County is hovering around 138,000 people - and growing.

The growing population is why Rankin will never be able to fully eradicate the situation. Duggan and Guest can only tamp it down, but Brown said he has a long-term solution for convicted criminals.

"Why not start a penal farm like the one in Hinds County?" Brown said. "There's plenty of work to be done in the county with painting and litter. We have the land available to do it too. Let's put these inmates to work."

Although Pennington has said he is on board with the farm, the idea has gained little traction. In the meantime, inmates awaiting sentencing have become admirers of Duggan's work.

"I get letters from them now asking for us to look at their case," he said. "The ones that are eligible we review, but there are plenty of serious offenders we have to ignore. But it's really something. These guys don't want to be in there any longer than they have to. Neither do we."
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20081020/NEWS/810200339/1001/news