RELIEF SOUGHT FOR OVERCROWDING AT SPARTANBURG JAIL

Increase In Average Length Of Stay, Court Backlog Are Factors

SPARTANBURG -- Spartanburg County is looking for ways to solve problems at
its overcrowded jail, where inmates often sleep three to a cell and
officers supervise twice the number of prisoners that some experts think is
safe.

It makes for a tense situation for both officers and inmates, said
Spartanburg County jail director Larry Powers.

"Obviously, it makes things more hectic," he said. "Inmates have a tendency
not to get along in a two-inmate room with three inmates."

Overcrowding has been an ongoing problem for years, Powers said. In the
2000-01 fiscal year, the average daily population at the jail was 612
inmates - triple the daily population 10 years ago. This month, the jail
has housed as many as 665 inmates at once.

A study last year by the Berkeley, Calif.-based Institute for Law and
Policy Planning found that "the primary force driving jail growth in
Spartanburg County has been an increase in the average length of stay."

The study found that while admissions to the jail rose 32 percent from 1991
to 1999, the average length of stay grew more dramatically from 4.3 days in
1991 to 10.6 days in 1999, an increase of 142 percent. Because the majority
of inmates in county jails are there only to await trial, longer stays
aren't a matter of sentencing so much as process.

"That's when it takes a cooperative effort to see where the holdup is and
what can be done," said Joann Morton, associate professor of criminal
justice at the University of South Carolina. "Before asking to build more
bed space, local communities need to ask, 'Have we done everything we can
to use the beds we have as effectively as we can?'"

Spartanburg County leaders say they're looking at every option possible to
avoid building more jail space.

Part of the effort involves investing in computer systems that will
integrate information between the offices that process inmates. Currently,
those entities have trouble sharing information, according to the
institute's study, because their record-keeping systems are either out of
date or incompatible. Improving communication will cost up to $4 million,
but county leaders believe it will "pay for itself in the long run," County
Council Chairwoman Karen Floyd said. Other efforts are being made to solve
the jail crunch.

The solicitor's office has made a dent in the county's criminal court
backlog. Spartanburg also is working to decrease its sentenced population
by investing in a special drug court that requires rehabilitation rather
than jail time and working to contract with a private company to supervise
home detention. Morton said there must be alternatives to incarceration.

"In the South, people have generally seen incarceration as primary
punishment," she said. "There are other ways to punish people."