KENTUCKY VOICES

Work To Reduce Jail Overload

Madison County's 15-year-old jail is overcrowded. It's designed for 180
inmates, but the jail population frequently reaches 250 inmates.

Overcrowding is a national problem. The number of prisoners has increased
300 percent since the 1980s, and record dollars are being spent.

In 2001, every man, woman and child in the United States paid $580 to
finance the criminal justice system.

Many types of crime are down, but that appears to have very little
correlation to the large increases in the prison population. An increase in
drug abuse is one of the major factors contributing to the increase. But
there is a growing recognition that incarceration is not the best response
to substance abuse.

Some communities are organizing themselves to resist jail expansion. They
say there are many alternatives to incarceration that are much more
effective in correction and prevention. They argue that jail time breeds
crime, makes people more dangerous and is rarely rehabilitative.

Because jails are so expensive, building a bigger one should be undertaken
only after less costly options have been explored. A few indicators that
should be assessed in measuring the efficiency of the local criminal
justice system are:

. A high percentage of inmates in pretrial status.

. Slow processing of cases. A rule of thumb is that 90 percent of felonies
should be disposed of within 120 days of arrest. Detroit Recorders Court
(felony court) implemented procedures to reduce processing time and reduced
the jail population by more than half.

. Little or no use of pretrial release.

. Little or no use of alternatives to incarceration for sentenced offenders

. Holding defendants on relatively minor charges.

. Large numbers held for failure to appear in court.

. Backlog of state inmates.

Are all the arms of the local criminal justice system willing to cooperate
to assess and improve the process? Madison County Fiscal Court has
commissioned some studies, but that is only a small part what must be done.

If we are not careful, we could end up like Fayette County, whose
4-year-old detention center is already overcrowded.

I'm afraid that a famous movie line is too true for jails: "If you build
it, they will come."