County leaders must do better on justice

In 2019 the Washington County Quorum Court paid National Center for State Courts $70K to assess our entire justice system. That study found we will only need to expand our jail if we do nothing. That’s pretty much what we’ve done, only it’s even worse than that. What little progress we have made in justice reform is being reversed.

Instead of implementing real justice reforms like drug and alcohol addiction treatment, mental health treatment, job training, a sobering center and more (even something as simple as paying our public defenders on par with prosecutors), Washington County leadership has chosen to ignore the study and all the data that show justice reforms like these do work.

County Judge Patrick Deakins suspended the Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee (CJCC) just a few days after the committee voted unanimously to pursue implementation of a real pretrial services program. We recently learned our Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) is closing permanently due to under-utilization and, to some extent, funding.

Washington County is forging ahead with the plan to use $20 million-plus dollars of American Rescue Plan Act dollars to expand our jail. The county judge is on record in support of a regional jail. Is that the direction you want your county to take?

CSUs in Sebastian, Pulaski and Craighead counties are all thriving. Danny Baker, police chief in Fort Smith, said at a recent conference the CSU there had resulted in a 50% reduction in incarceration, with no increase in crime.

At that same conference I heard that Washington County has the best facility and the best equipment of all the CSUs. Yet, why isn’t our CSU successful? Our leaders should not just sit back and accept this failure. They should investigate and study the reasons we haven’t had the success others are having and do the hard work to bring the change that will make us successful, such as finding a vendor committed to making the CSU what it could and should be.

Reversing proven reforms that reduce unnecessary imprisonment and promote alternatives to incarceration will result in more individuals being locked up for low level, nonviolent offenses — people sitting in jail because they are too poor to buy their freedom.

When we do away with the CJCC and CSU, we are ignoring what the professionals are telling us we must do to decrease incarceration and make our community better. Yes, these reforms cost money, but compared to the cost of incarcerating a person in our jail (around $100 per day), they can save us millions of dollars.

Whatever we do or do not do now will impact our community for decades to come. I want to see us do better, and we are fortunate to have the resources to do better. Our leaders and decision makers just have to want to do better. Let your elected officials know you want us to all do better.

BETH COGER Fayetteville Editor’s note: Coger is a member of the Washington County Quorum Court.