By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Staff Writer

Jails in Northern Virginia and across the Washington area are less crowded
and house fewer inmates overall than in the late 1980s but face a variety of
new problems, including the rise of AIDS among prisoners and a growing
proportion of juvenile and female inmates, according to a new report.

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, which issued its ninth
annual study on crime and crime control, attributed the changes to new
construction of jails in the region, the return of state prisoners held in
local jails and a slight drop in crime and arrests.

It also indicated a new willingness among local correction officials to
explore alternatives to incarceration, such as electronic monitoring.

"In the late 1980s, the extent of overcrowding in all regional jails
approximated 3,300 inmates; now it ranges between 800 and 1,000 inmates,"
said Mike Gills, a public safety planner at the council.

Unlike prisons, jails are locally operated facilities holding suspects
awaiting trial, parole violators and inmates about to be transferred to
federal or state authorities. A jail stay usually lasts less than one year.

"We're still looking at overcapacity. We are still overcrowded, but not to
the extent we were a couple of years ago," said Alexandria Sheriff James H.
Dunning, a member of the council's corrections chiefs committee, which
compiled the data on regional jails.

In mid1996, jails nationwide were at 92 percent capacity, down from the peak
crowding of mid1989, when jails across the United States were 8 percent over
capacity.

The designated capacity of the eight Washington area jails included in the
study is 13,854. Recently, the total inmate population has hovered around
14,000 offenders, down about 1,000 from the late 1980s, the report said.

But persistent crowding continues to force area superintendents to cram extra
beds into 70squarefoot cells and stretch resources to the limit, according
to figures released by the corrections chiefs.

"We're busting at the seams here," said Loudoun County Sheriff Stephen O.
Simpson, who said the Loudoun jail last week had 100 inmates, above its
62bed capacity.

As of January, Fairfax had the most severe crowding problem, with a
population of 951, above the jail's capacity of 589. Other crowded jails
included Prince George's, with 1,320 prisoners, above the 1,140bed capacity,
and Alexandria, with 420 prisoners, above the 373bed capacity. The District,
with 9,114 inmates, reported a shortage of 177 beds.

The Prince William County jail had 491 inmates last week, above its
467inmate capacity, Superintendent Glen Hill said.

Dunning said a new 330bed facility in Caroline County, about 60 miles south
of Washington, due to be completed in 1999, will help alleviate crowding by
accepting prisoners from Arlington, Loudoun, Prince William and Caroline
counties and the cities of Alexandria and Richmond.

The report did not give specific figures for juvenile or female inmates in
the Washington area but said they are growing as a percentage of the jail
population. "The younger population presents a difficult problem for us
because most of them their actions are so unpredictable that we have to be
concerned about security and safety," Hill said.

Nationwide, only onesixth of 1 percent of the 256,615 jail inmates in
mid1985 were juveniles. In mid1996, that number had risen to 1.6 percent of
the 518,492 U.S. jail inmates. In that period, the proportion of female
inmates in U.S. jails rose from 7.5 percent to 10.9 percent, the council
reported.

Rising healthcare costs also have troubled the region's jails.

Corrections officials have responded by seeking new ways to stretch limited
budgets already burdened by the costs of caring for inmates with tuberculosis
and AIDS.

Loudoun County replaced its medical personnel in the jail with a private firm
under contract to the jail and began charging inmates copayments for
previously free drugs, including aspirin, on the basis of income they earned
before they entered jail or money they receive from relatives, Simpson said.

The council's report recommended "alternatives to incarceration such as
electronic monitoring and intensive supervision to ensure jail space is
available for truly violent criminals."

Although the council did not endorse any policy recommendations on jails,
correction experts said officials are increasingly aware of the importance of
rehabilitation, not just retribution.

"You have people coming in for something that's . . . minor; then they come
out knowing how to do a whole lot of different things," Gills said. "That's
why it's important for jails to have resources to make sure prisoners are
doing proactive, positive things."

However, critics of the region's jails said the report does not adequately
explore alternatives to incarceration such as home supervision or social
programs including job training, drug treatment and counseling.

"None of that is in any way correlated to how crowded [jails] are," said Eric
Lotke, a research associate at the Alexandriabased National Center on
Institutions and Alternatives. "We're very happy if they're not triplebunked
anymore, but that's not what conditions of confinement are about."

Lotke said the construction of new jails will lead only to more inmates to
fill them. He recommended that lawmakers work to devise more rehabilitative
institutions.

Simpson, who chairs the council's correction chiefs committee, said
correction officials and judges need to be more willing to consider other
punishment options.

"Some inmates are better suited for that; they need to be accounted for but
not actually in a facility every day," he said, although he said jails are
still necessary for violent offenders.

He also expressed pessimism about crowded jails. "I don't think you're going
to see an overabundance of jail beds in this area," he said. "As fast as
they're built, they're filled up."

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company