TOUR HIGHLIGHTS HAIL CROWDING

Task force seeking solution to problem.

There's little room for political correctness behind the unadorned walls
of the Boone County Jail, where social changes spawn overcrowding issues.

Every morning, some inmates pass through heavy sliding doors and walk
through odd-shaped corridors to new cells and dorm areas. The daily
moving routine helps use space in the most efficient way. Unknown to
most outsiders, however, is that gender plays a big role in placement
decisions. Jail guards say female inmates are prone to bickering and
have to be placed either in single cells or small dorm areas.

"For some reason, you can put 12 males together and the problems don't
multiply as if you put six females together," said Lt. Keith Hoskins,
assistant jail administrator.

Other gender differences surface in jail and become topics of
light-hearted discussions: While men regularly tear apart the
basketball and the hoop in their exercise area, the women's equipment
lasts for years.

Members of the Boone County Judicial and Law Enforcement Task Force
learned about managing the local inmate population during a visit to
the jail last week. The task force is an advisory board looking for
solutions to jail overcrowding.

Female inmates average about 18 percent of the Boone County jail
population. The national average for local jails is about 13.5 percent.

"We are actually running a higher average of females than nationally,"
jail administrator Maj. Warren Brewer said earlier this year.

Federal recommendations call for separation of inmates by sex and by
category of charges, such as misdemeanors, felonies and violent felonies.

The jail administration also needs enough single cells on a daily
basis to honor requests for protective custody and enforce
administrative and disciplinary segregation.

"Every morning we have to play a show game of moving inmates within
the facility so that we can make classifications fit," Hoskins said,
adding that he wishes the jail had more single cells.

Meeting the requirements means the county jail can fit fewer inmates.
Although the jail has 210 beds, its optimum capacity is for 189 inmates.

When the county has more inmates in custody, some are sent to the
Reality House or jails in other counties. Costs to house inmates
outside the jail totaled $272,687 last year.

Increasing populations of female inmates and arrested women has been a
nationwide trend since the early 1990s. About 22 percent of the
inmates booked at the county jail were women last year, according to a
jail report.

Hoskins said women appear to commit crimes more often than in the
past, including violent crimes.

"Used to be we never had a female in for murder," he said. "We had
several in the last couple of years."

Statistics from the Department of Justice show the number of men
arrested on charges of aggravated assault fell 12.3 percent in the
past 10 years, while the number of women arrested on the same charge
rose 24.9 percent.

Drug arrests nationwide rose 34.5 percent for men in the same period
and 50 percent for women.

Dan Viets, a local defense attorney who has rallied for the
legalization of small amounts of marijuana, said the increase in the
number of female inmates probably results from too-stringent drug policies.

Rusty Antel, chairman of the judicial and law enforcement task force,
said he recently saw an "explosion of women with DWI charges," and he
heard the same observation from a fellow defense attorney.

The increased number of female inmates is not the only change
affecting the local corrections system. Hoskins told the judicial and
law enforcement task force that recidivism appears to have become
commonplace, as repeat offenders return to jail over and over again.

Serving jail time also carries down in families, and judges are more
inclined to lock up the sons and daughters of former inmates, he said.

"I see the fourth and the fifth generations of people I dealt with in
the past," Hoskins said. "Judges say, 'You are a Stapleton,' or, 'You
are a Barney. We'll make you postpone instead of releasing you.' "