A BETTER APPROACH

Jail Discussion With Alternatives

Nationwide, one of every six inmates in county jails is mentally ill.
Seventy percent of those inmates face charges involving non-violent
offenses, many of them "status" crimes like minor drug possession or
loitering.

These numbers, from the Bazelon Center on Mental Health Law,
illustrate how jails have become mental-health hospitals of the 21st
century. Many people now filling cells would once have been
hospitalized. Now that the hospitals are gone, they have no place to
go but the street -- toward addiction, homelessness, and a seemingly
endless cycle of petty offenses and incarceration.

Volusia County officials didn't create this problem, but it's their
problem nonetheless. The county jail is full, and corrections
officials recommend a $35 million expansion to prevent illegal
overcrowding. Local residents should ask themselves how much time $35
million will buy -- how long before a new facility becomes
overcrowded?

Answering that question should lead to solutions better than bigger
jails. One particularly worthy consideration is a proposal by Serenity
House, a local substance-abuse treatment provider, to build a $3
million facility that would house 125 non-violent offenders. The
proposal is aimed at breaking the cycle that keeps inmates shuffling
from jail to the street and back again.

At one-tenth the cost of a new jail, the Serenity House proposal seems
like a bargain. Official support from the county could help the
project attract federal and state grants.

The Serenity House proposal should be a no-brainer for Volusia County
Council members. The real question they should be asking: What else
can be done?

The county will need more jail beds. But council members should also
seek every means possible to reduce the number of beds filled by
people who don't really belong behind bars.

That means working closely with judges, prosecutors and corrections
officials who are already trying to keep the jail population down.

In 2003, Volusia County instituted a jail-diversion program with the
ACT Corp., the area's largest mental-health provider. That program
kept 113 people out of jail last year, and 98 of them successfully
completed a 21-day treatment program. The high rate of success would
never have been possible without the cooperation of Volusia County
corrections officials, who screened inmates, and the State Attorney's
Office, which agreed to defer prosecution for those involved in the
diversion program.

Without this strong leadership, Volusia County would have faced a
jail-crowding crisis years ago. That realization should bolster
council members' resolve to be just as creative in looking for
fiscally sound, compassionate alternatives to incarceration. They also
would be wise to work with Flagler County, which also has crowding
problems, about a cooperative approach.

In many other communities diversion is already working. Those
communities include Cook County, Illinois, where a diversion program
similar to the model used locally produced a significant reduction in
the number of new arrests among people who had participated in the
program and a New York City program that cut jail costs for people in
its program by 75 percent.

The Serenity House proposal offers a good place to start. But County
Council members should recognize that it won't be enough -- and keep
that in mind as they consider further plans for the jail.