Let’s be smart on crime

On Nov. 8, voters in Washington County voted against a sales tax that would have cost taxpayers $113 million and increased our Washington County jail by 110 to 150 beds. The rejection was a smart thing to do: Jails do not improve communities or individuals the way pretrial diversion programs do. Building more jail beds would not be good stewardship of our tax dollars.

In the nation’s jails, 68% of offenders have substance abuse, addiction or dependency. About 38% to 50% were high when they offended. Seventy percent are in jail because they couldn’t raise $500 to $100,000 for bail. They are being held for trials, not for punishment.

Imagine the empty beds we would have if 7,000 of our 10,000 inmates in a year in the Washington County jail were released on their own recognizance. That alone would reduce the jailed to 3,000 a year. Then we could open even more beds by adding more pretrial assessment and release until trial for way more of the drug offenders.

We could solve our crowding problem in every county by offering more pretrial diversion services and by eliminating bail for nonviolent offenders. A spokesperson for the Washington County jail said at the Dec. 5 Quorum Court’s Jail/Law Enforcement Courts Committee meeting that 200-300 people a month could be diverted if the county provided about $600,000, plus office space and supplies, to add five case managers and related pretrial assessment staff. Doing that would get the untried people off the floor and into beds or back to work supporting their families and put the jail back at its operating capacity. It is also much less expensive to provide pretrial diversion services for nonviolent offenders than to merely house them for weeks or months on end, awaiting trial.

The federal Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Policy states there is no evidence punishment by prison or jail helps change drug and alcohol problems, while community treatment, job training and offender support works well for the majority of cases. Bigger jails are part of the problem, not the solution, for public safety, except for high-risk or violent offenders. Jail separates nonviolent suspects from their jobs, kids, family supports, housing and reputation, which causes them to be a permanent underclass. Changing offender behavior creates more safety for citizens than does jailing with no change programs.

Arkansas’ 7th Judicial District [Grant and Hot Spring counties] has a pretrial release program with a 60% success rate: they are investing in restorative programs that cost less. Most participants end up with no criminal offense record when they complete the program.

We must insist that our county leaders fund more programs and staff in the jails that now exist. There is very little counseling or job training in our jails, and there is no space there for it. The cost of the kind of program we would need has been estimated by the National Center for State Courts that studied this at $1.6 million. It will be worth it in money saved over the long haul.

A group Gov. Mike Beebe assembled in 2011 found, after much study of Arkansas incarceration policy and in consultation with the nationally known Pew Research Center, that community supervision and treatment are more effective than long prison sentences and high incarceration rates for nonviolent offenders.

There is no end of research proving we should be shifting to community solutions that keep nonviolent offenders close to their jobs and family supports. Such diversion programs are smart on crime, not soft on crime.

Drug treatment for nonviolent drug offenders pays off big-time: $20,000 to $22,000 a year per person in the Breaking the Cycle program in Maryland, for example.

For more examples and to get involved, call the Arkansas Justice Reform Coalition at (479) 345-1150. And call your justice of the peace today to ask them for smart-on-crime solutions, not more jail space.