DOES JAIL NEED MORE BEDS FOR WOMEN?

Advocates instead seek ways to decrease the inmate population.

When Travis County commissioners approved the 2018 budget in September that included about $6.6 million to design a new women’s facility in the Del Valle jail, County Judge Sarah Eckhardt insisted, over the cries of criminal justice reform advocates, that it would not mean more beds overall but that more would be allocated to women.

But county staffers told commissioners Tuesday that new modeling showed an increasing number of female inmates would require the number of beds to jump from 336, the jail’s current female capacity, to 411.

After hearing opposition from several advocates Tuesday, Eckhardt decided to postpone for a week a decision on whether to move forward with the $97 million project, which will be paid for with bonds that don’t require voter approval.

Next Tuesday is the deadline for commissioners to sign off on the total debt issuances for this fiscal year if they want to stay

on schedule, budget director Travis Gatlin said.

Commissioner Brigid Shea pushed for the vote delay to give commissioners and county staff time to look into the possibility of spending some of the $97 million on diversion programs.

Eckhardt acknowledged that bed capacity will be going up, but she said she doesn’t think improving the facility for the women and supporting and expanding jail diversion programs need to be mutually exclusive.

“I don’t think that the replacement of 336 crappy beds with 411 good beds is going to reduce the zeal of this community or this Commissioners Court for diverting people out of the criminal justice system into services that will really help them,” Eckhardt said.

But some advocates say there is more the county can do before turning to a jail expansion.

A coalition of 10 community groups co-signed a letter last month urging the county to instead engage in discussions with members and policymakers about ways to decrease the inmate population, such as diversion programs and decriminalizing certain low-level offenses.

The recommendation to create the new facility came from a needs analysis of the adult correctional system the county commissioned in 2014 and the resulting master plan that consultants produced in 2016. The idea was among $616 million worth of recommendations over about 20 years that included reorganizing the jail setup, replacing four correctional facilities and performing maintenance on existing buildings.

Sheriff Sally Hernandez told commissioners that, on top of the primary female facility being in poor physical shape, the current setup splits the female population into five facilities. That makes it more difficult to supply them with services and at times puts them in uncomfortable and risky situations having to walk through male units to get to programs, she said.

“This is not about quantity,” Hernandez said. “This is about quality, and it’s about helping women get the programs and support and medical services that they need.”

Eckhardt and other officials said they were still studying the data to understand why the female inmate population has increased. County data shows that it’s likely not because more women are getting arrested.

Total bookings for women dropped 15 percent from fiscal years 2012 to 2017, from 13,026 to 11,033, but bookings for higher-level offenses, which tend to mean longer jail stays, increased, according to county data provided by staff.

Female felony bookings went up during that same period by 15 percent, from 1,709 in 2012 to 1,971 in 2017, the data shows. That increase in higher-level offenses has contributed to an increase in average length of stay, county staff said.

Doug Smith, senior policy analyst with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, one of the signers of the January letter, was among those who spoke Tuesday before the Commissioners Court. He said spending money on increasing capacity is a “squandering of resources” that could be spent on mental health services, for example.

“This is not the time to be building new facilities,” Smith said. “This is the time to be addressing ... a serious mental health problem, a serious substance use and public health problem. And the thing is, that actually costs less to do.”