 Jennifer HemmingsenI'm an op-ed columnist and member of The Gazette's editorial board, writing primarily about Iowa politics, social issues, public safety [...] |
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Reducing jail numbers is an uphill battle
Capt. Dave Wagner, Jail Administrator, shows cells in the maximum-security C Block on a tour of the Johnson County Jail on Thursday, Aug. 9, 2012, in Iowa City. (Liz Martin/The Gazette-KCRG)
What’s next, now that Johnson County voters declined to approve a $46.8 million justice center?
County supervisors say they won’t give up — they’ve vowed to try again.
A few hours after the ballot measure came up a few percentage points shy of the 60 percent it needed to pass, they started talking about how and when to do it. The issue could come to a vote again in as little as six months, although it likely will be longer.
Meanwhile anti-justice center folks say that whenever it does come back they’ll be ready to defeat the proposal a third time, declaring that once people know more about the issue, they’ll surely vote their way. That might be true, if knowing more means being subjected to slippery statistics cited by a talking bear on a “vote no” website.
But in the months or years before the justice center issue comes back around, I wish, instead, we could have a more serious discussion about incarceration. The fact is, jail opponents aren’t wrong in saying that we put too many people in jail. That’s not a Johnson County thing, it’s a problem nationwide.
We put more people behind bars in the United States than any other country in the world. According to the non-profit Sentencing Project, there now are 2.2 million people in our nation’s prisons and jails. That’s a 500 percent increase over the past 30 years. A number that puts Johnson County’s incarceration rates in perspective.
Our jails and prisons are at the bottom of the proverbial hill. The one you-know-what rolls down. And they are flooded. Look up the slope and there’s high school dropout rates that have been high and steady for decades, especially among certain ethnic and racial groups. There’s a broken mental health delivery system that lets adults with chronic conditions fall right through the cracks.
There’s the war on drugs and other get-tough legislation that’s easy to pass but ties judges’ hands when it comes to sentencing offenders. The halfway houses sitting empty because of political budget battles. And on and on and on.
It would be great if we could reduce incarceration rates just by voting against a county building project. Of course, it’s not that easy. If we want to reduce the number of people behind bars in Johnson County, in Iowa and the United States — and we should — we’ve got to work uphill.
Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net
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Exactly.
Although police and sheriff’s deputies have a certain amount of leeway with regard to minor problems, they don’t make the decisions when it comes to arrests and incarcerations.
Bottom line is what the opposition from both the left and right is doing is punishing the people who get jailed for problems they did not create.
While I don’t expect conservatives to care, I do expect liberals to care
Not true. Iowa law provides that the Sheriff can decline any prisoner he wants. The Sheriff has the choice to spend the money housing inmates elsewhere or not.
This entire issue is fabricated by those who benefit from the new jail. . The cops arrest them (get new jail and offices), the County attorney refuses to let them out on bond (gets new office), the Judges rubber stamp (they get new offices also) We just get the millions in bills to pay.
Mr Roman,
Whether prisoners are housed in Johnson County or shipped to Washington County et al, they are still arrested, they are still in jail.
Problem not solved. Who pays? The people actually stuck in a jail cell holding twice as many people as the cell was originally designed to hold. Or shipped to another county where they are further removed from their lawyers, family, friends, even medical care.
As for your “fabricated by those who benefit”, Police and Sheriff’s Deputies can’t just arrest people because they feel like it. They have to have reason. These reasons are defined by law. Police and Sheriff’s Deputies do not determine the law. They do what they are told to do.
The County Attorney does not determine bond nor does she have the power to arbitrarily refuse bond. And judges do not rubber stamp.
We’ve got millions in bills to pay regardless of which course of action we decide to take. We can either choose to continue to lock up human beings in a substandard, over crowded understaffed jail, or we can build one more suited to the needs of Johnson County now, not the needs of Johnson County a half century ago.
As for the Johnson County Court House it’s really neat to look at. But there is simply not enough space to allow Johnson County Courts to do what they are supposed to do. The Court House is over a hundred years old. It is a security nightmare with limited accessibility for those who can’t make it up all those flights of stairs. The County Attorney’s office is in hard to find cul de sac in the basement. The County Clerks’ office is understaffed not just because they don’t have the funding to hire, but because they wouldn’t have any place to put people even if they did have the money to hire. You walk into any office and you’ll see cardboard boxes full of records and office supplies piled up everywhere.
This does not work.
You want to punish inmates and employees of Johnson County because of what? You don’t like current federal drug laws? You’re going after the wrong people.