Proposed inmate cap for Sebastian County jail moves forward
FORT SMITH — The Sebastian County jail may no longer consistently hold more inmates than beds going forward. The sheriff said keeping the inmate population in check allows the jail to operate within its budget.
A subcommittee from the Sebastian County Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee recommended adopting a 356-inmate cap for the jail during a meeting Wednesday. The jail has 356 beds.
The subcommittee recommended the Sheriff’s Office notify the county’s district and circuit judges, prosecutor and public defender, as well as the Fort Smith police chief, every weekday the jail exceeds the inmate cap in order to reduce the facility population. This notification would include a list of inmates the Sheriff’s Office believes could be released on a signature bond and given a court date. The number of inmates on the list would be at least double the amount needed to bring the facility in compliance with the cap.
Drew Smith, county criminal justice coordinator, said the committee will discuss the recommendations at its meeting Thursday.
The Quorum Court established the committee in August 2017 to find ways to reduce the jail population and improve the justice system.
Among the solutions it has devised are drug, veterans and mental health courts; a crisis stabilization unit; alternative sentencing and diversion programs; special accelerated court dockets; and electronic monitoring and signature bonds for nonviolent felony suspects.
County Circuit Judge Stephen Tabor, who made the original motions to make both of these recommendations, said Friday he proposed the second one to protect the interest of public safety. It includes three safeguards to try to ensure this: the Sheriff’s Office making
its recommendations for inmates who be released based on assessments of risk, the prosecutor providing their input on these recommendations and the judges making the final decisions on the matter.
Wednesday’s recommendations came after Sheriff Hobe Runion advocated instituting a cap of 320 inmates, along with policies and procedures to decide who is and is not released from the facility.
Runion said Wednesday he always felt like the jail should hold 320 inmates. Having 356 inmates would entail every bed in the facility being full, meaning, if an inmate can’t room with another inmate, there will people sleeping on mats on the floor.
Runion said although members of the committee have done much to try to curb the jail population, he believed they could use more bed space. However, it doesn’t have this due to the jail being a “finite commodity in the community,” with Runion being responsible for the inmate population as sheriff.
“I think that, I know it’s not popular, but I can’t stay at over 400 indefinitely,” Runion said. “We’re not staffed for 400. The budgets for the food, for the utilities, the washing machines, the kitchens, the medical care that we contract out, all of that is not based on the population that we currently have.”
Runion said Friday, due to the jail being a 356-bed facility, crowding leads to the Sheriff’s Office exceeding its budget. When this happens, the department has to request more general fund money from the county Quorum Court than what it was originally allotted. An inmate cap would save the sheriff’s office money in this regard.
Tabor expressed concern over Runion’s proposed cap during the meeting, although he wasn’t opposed to a cap as a concept.
Tabor believed, at some point, the county will probably have to build a new jail and ask the public for the money to do so. He theorized opponents to such an initiative would question the need for a new jail while the current one is both operating so low under capacity and holding inmates that provide revenue to the county through reimbursements, such as U.S. Marshals Service and Arkansas Department of Corrections inmates.
Runion said he thought Tabor’s issue was valid and he would willingly embrace a cap of 356 inmates if the subcommittee agreed to it. Jail operations could be reassessed at some point in the future should the cap be instituted.
Runion on Friday said he believed if the inmate cap were implemented, it would significantly alleviate stress at the jail. Crowding increases pressure for jail personnel, who have to work 12-hour shifts in what Runion described as a “hard environment.” This also applies to the inmates, who are in that same environment.
“They’re in a jail, and so when you overcrowd it, it seems like there’s a lot more tension, there’s a lot more fights, there’s a lot more assaults,” Runion said. “So I think it’ll help all of that.”