Idea for public defender office at jail floated as crowding fix

FAYETTEVILLE — A work group formed by Sheriff Tim Helder to combat crowding at the Washington County jail heard Friday that a new arrangement may help speed some cases through the legal process and get some people out of the jail sooner.

Gregg Parrish, executive director of the Arkansas Public Defender Commission, said he’s working with Helder to provide office space at the jail for a public defender who’ll attend the Rule 8.1 hearings, which are initial legal hearings for people after they have been arrested.

Some people, particularly those with mental health issues, can be identified at those hearings and have their cases expedited, Parrish said. Some people spend 30 or more days in jail after that first hearing before obtaining lawyers.

Parrish said he thinks expediting the process for those people could move from three to seven people a week out of the jail. Getting people with mental health problems released or diverted to treatment programs or facilities would be a larger benefit than the numbers indicate, he said.

“Why are we not getting lawyers to people earlier, including people with mental illnesses?” Parrish said. “People with mental illness, for the sheriff’s office it’s like having three people. They’ve got to be segregated and supervised.”

Parrish said he visits Northwest Arkansas at least once a month and has made it a point to observe hearings in the jail. He said he’s confident that his office can work with prosecutor Matt Durrett and Helder.

“I think we, and Matt’s office, can recognize a case that we can expedite,” Parrish said. “We may not always agree. If we don’t, that person will still go through the normal legal system.”

The group also discussed resolutions approved by the Quorum Court on Thursday with the goal of reducing crowding in the jail. One resolution asks Helder to end the contract to hold federal prisoners in the jail, and the second asks the sheriff to work to move prisoners awaiting room in the state prison system to other county jails.

Helder acknowledged that the Quorum Court can pass such resolutions but said he’ll continue to do his constitutionally mandated duties, which include operating the jail.

Removing federal and state inmates would have little or no lasting benefit to the county and would force the Quorum Court to replace from $2.5 million to $3 million in revenue the county receives, Helder said. The U.S. Marshals Service pays the county $62 per day to hold federal inmates, and the state pays the county $30 for state inmates in the jail.

The sheriff’s office estimates the daily cost of housing inmates at the jail at $62 per day.

The bulk of the federal inmates are people who were arrested locally after investigations begun by local law enforcement agencies and prosecutors who then asked the U.S. attorney’s office to take over the cases to possibly obtain enhanced penalties in cases of serious crimes, including child pornography, drug trafficking and crimes of violence, Helder said.

Moving those people away from Fayetteville, where the cases will be tried, would create burdens in travel and communication for parties on all sides of those cases, Helder said.

According to a report from the sheriff’s office, there were 91 people being held in the jail Friday for the Marshals Service out of the 729 prisoners.

There were 28 state inmates being held Friday who would be eligible to be moved to another facility.

The jail has a design capacity of 710 beds, but legal requirements for separating inmates lowers the operating capacity to around 580, depending on the number of inmates in the different categories and inmates who have been identified as “incompatible” with other detainees for reasons that include histories of disagreements or violence or the likelihood of problems between people with gang affiliations.

On one day in January, the jail had 717 inmates and the sheriff’s office identified 185 of those with at least one incompatibility. Of those, 44 had two incompatibilities and 41 had three or more incompatibilities. One individual was identified as having nine other inmates with whom they were deemed incompatible.

The sheriff’s office, working with the prosecutor, public defender and circuit judges, has been releasing more than 200 people a month on citations or on their own recognizance. That number reached 257 in January. Helder said, if space is available, judges may want some of those people to be held in jail.

The work group discussed the need to do what they can to reduce the population, with the immediate goal of having bed space available for all detainees. The sheriff’s office has said the crowded conditions result in 80-100 detainees sleeping on mats on the floor at times.

‘We’re not talking about animals here,” Monique Jones, president of the Northwest Arkansas branch of the NAACP and committee chairman, said during the meeting. “We’re talking about people sleeping on the floor.”