CROWDING CALLS FOR NEW SOLUTIONS

Clarke County Jail: Report Gives Options for Better Use

With not enough room at the inn, many inmates at the overcrowded
Clarke County Jail are sleeping on the floor, inside hard plastic
shells. Those shells are actually inverted mattress platforms, but
jailers say the inmates choose to turn them upside down and sleep in
them, rather than on top. Whether on top or inside, the platforms are
being used to accommodate many of the 430 inmates in a jail designed
to hold 338. The number of inmates housed there while awaiting their
day in court is only expected to grow, but it is hoped that within
four years a new jail will be open for business and able to handle all
comers. With a new jail being the priority item of a Judicial System
Needs Assessment, county officials next week will begin interviewing
seven architectural firms to determine which will be chosen to prepare
a design for the $50.8 million project.

The new facility is one of several recommendations on how to cope with
a growing jail population made in the needs assessment, prepared by a
consulting firm for Athens-Clarke County commissioners. If all goes as
hoped, funding for a 609-bed facility to replace the current 338-bed
jail will be on the ballot for a November referendum for funding with
special-purpose, local-option sales tax (SPLOST) funds, with
construction to be completed by a 2007 target date. The present jail
was constructed in 1981, at a time when it housed an average of
100-150 prisoners, according to Clarke County Chief Jailer Brett Hart.
During a recent tour of the Clarke County Jail, overcrowded conditions
were clearly evident.

In housing units C-3 and C-4, many inmates were seen lounging in their
blue plastic "Stack-A-Bunks." Hart said when inmates have to live on
top of one another, problems increase for them as well as their
caretakers. "Most disturbances arise from overcrowded conditions,"
he said. "The more people you put in there, the more people get on
each other's nerves." Fights will begin in overcrowded conditions for
the simplest of reasons, Hart said. "Someone might not like the sound
of your voice or thinks your feet stink," he said. A new jail would
eliminate the current linear design, in which many cells are adjacent
to each other in a straight row. Such a design means jailers must walk
down the hall, checking in on each cell. A new jail would incorporate
"direct supervision," employing horseshoe-shaped cell blocks that a
single jailer could monitor from a central location, Hart said. The
new jail should be designed so that it could one day be expanded to
become a 1,000-bed facility if needed, a consulting firm recommended
to county commissioners. Building a bigger and better jail is not the
only means of addressing the growing inmate population. In its Justice
System Needs Assessment report to county commissioners last month, the
Carter Goble Associates Inc. consulting firm recommended certain
measures the courts can take to alleviate jail overcrowding. "The
overall focus of this needs assessment is concerned with the unified
government's jail and the development of criminal justice system
improvements that can help to limit the growth of the jail and thereby
help to control related costs," the consultant's report states. The
recommendations include creation of a pre-trial release program that
would reduce jail admissions and length of stay by diverting
non-violent offenders to community-based supervision while their cases
are pending in court. Another recommendation is to expand to Superior
Court the "drug court" program, which is now used only in State
Court. As part of the expansion plan, a "judicial outpost" would be
built at the jail in which judges can preside over arraignments and
other matters.

The outpost would also be headquarters for the drug court.

The court would have a dedicated docket of only drug cases, with the
emphasis placed on obtaining treatment, rather than incarceration, for
drug abusers accused of committing crimes. "Our jail is overcrowded
mainly because of the drug problem," Superior Court Judge Steve C.
Jones said. "I'd say 65 to 70 percent of crimes are directly or
indirectly related to drugs.

If we could treat the ailment, some of these people won't be coming
back to jail." Jones said he handles up to 400 criminal cases
annually, an estimated 30 percent increase of his caseload from when
he first took the bench in 1995. A "mental health court" should also
be established, the consultant suggested, as another means of trying
to ensure prisoners receive the help they need so they hopefully will
not commit future offenses. According to the consultant, the jail
population has increased largely because the lengths of stays for
inmates have increased while awaiting trial. "Although the
jurisdiction's court system was found to be operating efficiently,
opportunities exist for reducing pre-trial lengths of stay," the
consultant wrote. To reduce the lengths of prisoner stays, the
consultant recommended further "case flow intervention
enhancements," such as that undertaken by Superior Court beginning
last year, when a judge was added to speed up the time it takes to
hear probation violation cases. "These actions resulted in a marked
decline (10%) in jail population at the end of 2002," Carter Goble
Associates wrote. The consulting firm also suggested the construction
of a 72-bed diversion center at the jail site, located behind the
Athens-Clarke County Police Department on Lexington Road. This would
be a minimum-security facility for non-violent offenders, and also a
reporting center for prisoners involved in work-release programs, the
consultant said.