New push aims to cut repeat jail sentences
Sidney Jackson is Franklin County’s $500,000 inmate.
Jackson, 61, has been arrested 190 times in Franklin County since 1993, costing the public at least $519,000 — a sum last calculated when he had 162 arrests.
Jackson’s address often is listed as the streets of Grove City or Urbancrest. He has been
charged with drug offenses or crimes such as theft and receiving stolen property that helped pay for his addiction. Court records show that many of Jackson’s arrests involve crack cocaine.
Twelve of Jackson’s arrests were fifthdegree felonies, the lowest felony level in Ohio, but his 178 misdemeanor arrests show that Jackson needs more than jail, said Michael Daniels, Franklin County’s new justice-policy coordinator.
Daniels is working to keep Jackson out of jail in a program he said is being eyed as a potential national model.
“What we should be doing is treating them for underlying issues,” Daniels said. Programs for substance-abuse or mental-health issues are cheaper and more beneficial than arresting, jailing and processing Jackson and dozens like him through the criminal-justice and court systems.
Daniels started his job July 3. The newly created position pays $80,444 annually. That’s a slight raise from the $77,334 per year he was paid as the policy director for county Commissioner Marilyn Brown.
The job was created, Brown said, because of the expertise dealing with jail issues that Daniels built as Brown’s aide.
“These are huge issues the county needs to be paying attention to,” Brown said. “We need to understand better how we focus our efforts.”
Daniels will work as a liaison among several agencies, including the sheriff’s office, courts and public defenders, that aren’t always connected regarding providing services to inmates. Daniels wants to connect them.
“I’m the air traffic controller,” Daniels said.
The program, Daniels said, is being watched by the National Institute of Corrections, which could push for the program to be adopted in jails across the U.S. The program’s goal is to reduce the daily jail population by 30 percent by 2020.
An early objective is to create a spreadsheet of inmates and available services to be shared by all the agencies involved in the program. Another goal is to collaborate to make sure that inmates released from jail get services to help keep them out of jail.
“We want to help releasees get prepared to live in the real world,” Daniels said.
Jackson is one of a group of 40 to 50 “familiar faces” at the Franklin County Corrections Center. Those in that group typically rack up at least a few dozen jail visits a year, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
Jackson has spent about 4,500 days in the Franklin County jail, costing more than $400,000. Police runs that led to Jackson’s arrests and resulting court appearances cost the public more than $100,000. Not factored into that amount are costs for his public defender.
The defendants’ faces are familiar because they have addictions or mentalhealth issues, and the system has too few places for them to go for help.
“They move between the jail, the (homeless) shelter and the hospital,” Daniels said.
Addiction increasingly is viewed as a mental illness that can be treated rather than as a personality defect that keeps people in crowded, expensive jails.
Today, enough people with serious mental illnesses are admitted to jails to equal the populations of New Hampshire and Vermont combined — 2 million. The vast majority of them, about 75 percent, also have alcohol and drug issues, noted the Stepping Up Initiative, a national collaborative aimed at providing help, instead of jail, for the mentally ill. These people also stay in jail longer than others and are at a higher risk, once released, of going back to jail.
The goal is a situation “where jail can be for people we are afraid of, and not just a place to put people with no place to go,” Daniels said.
“What we should be doing is treating them for underlying issues.”
— Michael Daniels, Franklin County’s new justice-policy coordinator