LAW ENFORCEMENT DEALS WITH CROWDED JAIL

Spartanburg County Detention Facility Director Larry Powers Says He
Wishes the Movie "Field of Dreams" Had Never Been Made.

For him, the phrase, "If you build it, they will come," just hit a
bit too close to home, since he figured at the time it had more to do
with jails than baseball fields.

"When they built this jail, they all came," Powers said with a sardonic grin.

The county's current facility on California Avenue was constructed in
1994 to remedy chronic overcrowding. Yet within a month, every bed
had been filled, and within four years the county was back to square
one with the jail population again exceeding space. Today, there is
an average of 800 inmates at any given time with room for only 586 at
the main facility and its two small annexes.

As County Council prepares to review administration's recommendation
to address overcrowding by essentially doing the same thing as in the
past -- expanding the jail to the tune of $33.5 million -- county law
enforcement officials continue to grapple with ways to curb the local
jail population while admitting that the need for more space is unavoidable.

Powers said the state Department of Corrections has for years
pressured local jails to alleviate overcrowding, but because the
jails in counties with larger populations such as Charleston have
always been much worse, the state is just now honing in on

Spartanburg.

Yet overcrowding at local jails -- which is a national problem
according to the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Labor
Statistics -- doesn't necessarily coincide with more people
committing more crimes, Powers said. According to the most recent
crime statistics, all reported crimes in the city of Spartanburg
decreased by 7 percent in 2006 compared with 2005.

A better explanation for jail overcrowding might be in the more
mundane details -- for instance, Powers said, when Spartanburg County
municipalities over the years "decided they didn't want to be in the
prisoner business anymore" and gradually turned things over to the
county jail. Add to that the nonviolent offenders who often sit in
jail longer than necessary because they can't make bail -- currently
there are about 100 such local cases -- and court systems unable to
adjudicate cases fast enough.

"All these things affect the jail population, not necessarily that
there are more prisoners," Powers said.

In 2005, County Council requested a jail overcrowding committee be
formed to study such issues, and 7th Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy,
who also leads the committee, said the group has made headway in
streamlining the process of moving inmates through the jail.

Gowdy said the county's three circuit judges have been generous in
hearing criminal cases even when criminal court is not in session,
often giving up vacation time to do so. He also advocated for Gordon
Cooper, a Master-in-Equity who normally hears only those cases
referred by circuit judges, to be designated a "special" circuit
judge. Cooper now hears probation cases, which frees up circuit
judges for trials and guilty pleas.

Such measures over the past year, said Powers, have helped inmates
get through the system in weeks rather than months.

The home detention program -- which allows offenders to be monitored
at home rather than sit in jail -- also has modestly lightened the
burden. Of the 360 people who have gone through the program, only 102
have been sent back to jail for violations. Six participants have
escaped and have yet to be caught.

But overcrowding persists.

The committee made additional "very specific suggestions" for
remedies in its 2005 report to Council. Most have not been
implemented yet, Gowdy said.

There was the idea to create a county fund where money could be
posted on bonds under $10,000 so "inmates can be released and are not
held unnecessarily at county expense." And at the top of the list was
expansion of the jail, which Gowdy called "essential."

"It's not that (Council) disagreed with our findings, it's just a
multi-million-dollar decision to make more bed space and expand a
jail," Gowdy said. "We're doing everything we know how to do, and we
still have an overcrowding problem."

In a recent interview, Council Chairman Jeff Horton agreed.

"We've purged that entity there as best we can," Horton said. "The
fact is, as the community grows, the population of the jail will grow, too."