Jail costs

ogy specialist for Probationary Monitoring Services of Arizona. Thomas said most courts allow for sliding-scale fees, enabling more defendants to participate. The electronic services can monitor for alcohol consumption and track a person’s whereabouts.

Arizona law requires firsttime DUI offenders to be sentenced to a minimum of 10 days in jail if their blood-alcohol level is between 0.08 percent and 0.15 percent. Nine of those days can be suspended if the defendant completes an alcohol- or drug-abuse screening, counseling or a treatment program.

Peoria City Attorney Steve Kemp said the city views jail time as a scarce resource and offers various alternatives to low-risk offenders.

He said officials have not encountered problems with the monitoring devices and have had no instances of individuals escaping while wearing them. He said in some respects they are preferable to work-release programs, where the defendant spends the night in jail but is allowed to leave during the day.

“Weknow where that person is 24/7,” Kemp said of electronic monitoring. For those who are serving time in work-release programs, he said, there is no way of knowing where the person is if he or she isn’t at work or home.

“So, in many respects it provides us with even more accountability than what would happen normally with jail,” he said.

Despite cities’ increasing propensity for offering electronic monitoring, it is unclear how much of the jail cost savings translates into taxpayer savings.

Many cities track savings strictly by how much money is deflected from the jails, and not all jail fees are paid for by the city. Defendants are theoretically responsible for paying the city back for jail costs, but city officials say that doesn’t happen if the defendant is indigent. The funds could also be paid later.

According to the Maricopa County Department of Finance, approximately 11 percent of jail costs are recuperat- ed through billing cities and other jurisdictions for reimbursement, and no profit is generated through this process.

Jail costs comprise direct expenses, including operational and staffing needs, and indirect expenses, including facility maintenance and building depreciation.

Shelby Scharbach, CFO for the Maricopa County Department of Finance, said jail rates will climb if there is a lower number of inmates in the facilities. If more defendants are participating in home detention, jails will potentially see fewer inmates, Scharbach said.

“If we are having low volume in any particular year, the rate will inherently go up,” she said. “There’s a potential that it could come out as a wash to the cities.”

Scharbach said she believes city officials understand the economics.

Phoenix DUI attorney Mark DuBiel said Valley court systems have almost unanimously implemented home-detention programs, including those in Phoenix, Peoria, Glendale, Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, Scottsdale and Tempe.

Craig Rosenstein, another local DUI attorney, said some of the more conservative jurisdictions initially balked at the idea for fear of appearing soft on crime but came around when they saw the savings of other cities.

One notable holdout is Maricopa County.

Suspects who are arrested on suspicion of DUI by Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies or Arizona Department of Public Safety officers are processed through Maricopa County justice courts, where judges are prohibited from handing down home-detention sentences.

DuBiel offers this possible scenario: Two people leave the Waste Management Phoenix Open drunk. One is pulled over by a Scottsdale police officer; the other is stopped by a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy. Only the one arrested by Scottsdale police will have the option of home detention.

“It just seems inherently unfair,” DuBiel said.

Sheryl Rabin, public-information officer for Maricopa County’s 26 justice courts, said the judges believe home detention should be available in their jurisdictions, but they have been unsuccessful in coming to an agreement on parameters for such a program during discussions with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and some members of the Board of Supervisors.

“With the passage of time, combined with the new composition of the Board of Supervisors, we remain hopeful that Maricopa County will establish a home-detention program that serves the limited number of defendants that, due to medical or other limited circumstances, are unable to serve a sentence confined to a county jail facility,” Rabin said in an email. “Judicial discretion allows judges to utilize their experience to sentence appropriately, and home detention is one valid option for a limited number of individuals.”

There were 9,011 DUI charges filed through justice courts in fiscal 2012 and 9,532 filed in fiscal 2013. The figures are calculated by charges filed rather than by the number of defendants or cases, as one defendant could have more than one charge.

The issue has not risen to the level of a Board of Supervisors vote, which would be necessary to authorize any program.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office does not oppose a home-detention option, according Jerry Cobb, a spokesman for the office.

“The devil is in the details,” Cobb said when asked why no agreement has been reached.

Specifically, Cobb said there was no agreement on how to identify proper verification of medical conditions and how to adequately monitor the home detainees to ensure that they were complying with their sentences.

“They weren’t able to figure out a way to make it workable,” Cobb said.

A least one county official is opposed to home detentions from a justice standpoint.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said jail time is a better deterrent against driving drunk and said defendants can also go through one of the jail system’s alcohol-prevention programs.

“When you’re on home arrest, you can watch porno (and) get drunk,” Arpaio said. “I have plenty of room in the tents. They should do their time in jail.”