CROWDED CELLS MAKE TENSE JAILS

On busy nights, some inmates at the Spartanburg County jail sleep three to
a cell.

Meanwhile, each officer must monitor the activity of as many as 120
prisoners -- twice the number of prisoners some experts believe an officer
can safely and efficiently supervise.

It's a situation that can cause tension for jail officers and inmates,
according to 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."

Though beds were added when the county opened a new jail in 1994 and an
annex makes for extra room, overcrowding has been "an ongoing problem for
some time," Powers added.

In the 2000-01 fiscal year, the average daily population at the jail was
612 inmates -- triple the daily population 10 years earlier. This month,
the jail has housed as many as 665 inmates at once.

The increasing jail count suggests a rising number of criminals in
Spartanburg County, but that is only part of the story.

Last year's study by the Berkeley, Calif.-based Institute for Law and
Policy Planning (ILPP) reported 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?' "

That's what Spartanburg County leaders say they're trying to do.

"Basically, we're looking at every option possible to avoid ... building
more jail space," said County Council Chairwoman Karen Floyd.

The thrust of that effort is the county's investment in computer systems
that will integrate information between the offices that process inmates.
Currently, those entities have trouble sharing information, according to
the ILPP study, because their record-keeping systems do not interface or
are out of date.

The idea is that if the Sheriff's Office can't quickly share arrest
information with the solicitor's staff, prosecution of the case will be
delayed. Or if the clerk of court doesn't have easy access to jail records,
it may be difficult to organize time in the courtroom.

Improving communication will cost up to $4 million, but county leaders
believe it will "pay for itself in the long run," as Floyd put it. The
first phase of the project has been implemented.

In the meantime, county officials say they're doing their best. Magistrates
are on duty 24 hours a day, and since taking office in January, Solicitor
Trey Gowdy has worked to reduce the county's criminal court backlog.

"The numbers have improved since Trey's been in office. We're doing
everything we can to move folks through the system," said Solicitor's
spokesman Murray Glenn.

County jails in South Carolina also house inmates sentenced to less than 90
days of incarceration, and Spartanburg is working to decrease its sentenced
population.

County Council has invested in a special drug court that requires
rehabilitation rather than jail time. Council also recently passed first
reading on an ordinance to contract with a private company to supervise
home detention for certain offenses. The program, for instance, would allow
a man convicted of failure to pay child support to keep a job and support
his family.

While those alternatives to incarceration do not affect large numbers of
defendants and therefore do not have a substantial impact on reducing jail
population, they are a step in the right direction, according to Morton.
It's a shift in mentality that she thinks is important as the jail
population grows.

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

Still, adding jail space may be necessary in Spartanburg County, according
to Blake Taylor, the Director of Inspection and Operational Review for the
state Department of Corrections.

He credits Powers' effective management of the Spartanburg County jail with
minimizing the problems that result from overcrowding. "But that only goes
so far," Taylor said.