Pima County nixes drug possession charges to stem COVID spread in jail

Pima County Attorney Laura Conover says she will not charge “people arrested for simple drug possession, paraphernalia or personal-use incidents” for the next 60 days to prevent a spread of COVID-19 in the Pima County jail among incarcerated people and staff.

“First and foremost, it’s the right thing to do,” Conover said. “We always want to remember that the jail is a place to separate people who are an ongoing threat of harm, and need to be separated. And that’s what the jail is for. It’s not a hospital. It’s not a treatment facility. It’s just not for any other purpose.”

Conover notified law enforcement officials last week of the new charging policies in a memo recommending they “deflect people to drug treatment.”

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos would not comment on whether cases were increasing in the jail but called COVID-19 “a hazard for those who are incarcerated.”

“We know that they’re restricted in spaces where the ventilation isn’t the greatest,” he said. “And they’re typically in crowded places as well.”

There are 17 COVID-19 positive incarcerated people in the Pima County jail, out of a inmate population of 1,627. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 967 inmates have tested positive for COVID-19 in the jail, and three have died from the virus.

Nanos said he’s implementing a vaccine mandate for jail staff that will take effect Jan. 1. “I need to be doing all that I can to prevent deaths in the jails,” he said. “And I don’t know that I am if I’m not mandating my employees to get the shot.”

According to the jail, there are two staff members who are currently positive for COVID-19 and 193 employees have tested positive to date.

Nanos says he’s received a lot of resistance to the mandate, but feels it’s a necessary step to prevent spread in the jail.

“I need to think about not just my employees, but everybody in that whole population, and that includes the inmates,” he said.

While Nanos says he supports the county attorney’s attempts to reduce the jail population, he hopes the judicial system will take similar steps.

“We have people in our jail who shouldn’t be there,” Nanos said. “We’ve decided that the best thing to do with people that we don’t know what to do with is to throw them in jail, and it’s time to change. I look at our jails and the way we deal with our judicial system and its processes and say, ‘Yeah, is there a better way?’ Sure.”

Conover said she has been frustrated since taking office in January with the size of the jail population.

“It’s been slow but steady creep upward, which is particularly alarming during COVID,” she said. “So it was time to just really do a couple of things. One was to stem the volume going into jail. And the second thing that we’re doing right now is another huge, deep dive into the whole population that’s in there to look for any people that can and should come out, identify them and stipulate to that release.”

Maricopa County Attorney’s Office spokesperson Jennifer Liewer said they had no comment on the actions taken by the Pima County Attorney’s Office.

“However, at the start of the pandemic our office prioritized our charging to prevent anyone from being held in custody on lower-level felony offenses unless there were clear public safety reasons to do otherwise in a specific case,” Liewer said. “This allowed the jail to reduce its population to give it time to implement appropriate safety measures within the jails.”

“The fact that we did not immediately file on a drug possession case where a person was initially booked into jail did not mean, however, that we did not intend to prosecute the offense,” Liewer said. “We just did so at a later time without holding the individual in custody.”

Despite recently requesting assistance from the Arizona National Guard to help with staffing in the jails, Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Norma Gutierrez-Deorta said they are not at a “critical point” at this time.

“Sheriff Penzone has requested agencies to be circumspect in booking nonviolent misdemeanors,” Gutierrez-Deorta said. “Further steps to reduce the jail population will only be taken if our resources and ability to care for the jail population is outweighed by the demand on our staff and health safety concerns.”

Conover says she will reexamine the change in 60 days but indicated she is looking for ways to expand the policy.

Pima County Public Defender Joel Feinman says he hopes the changes are permanent.

“I’m always happy when we stop needlessly prosecuting people for drug offenses which the criminal justice system can never and has never addressed,” Feinman said. “We should no longer be trying to fix substance abuse and mental health through criminalization.”

Feinman said the policy change will likely benefit hundreds of people in Pima County.

“I hope the criteria are expanded,” he said. “I hope that we start reimagining how we prosecute all sorts of things, not just minor drug possession. If we were really serious about doing something to address the drug crimes that we see in society, we’d be talking about social spending, healthcare spending, psychological treatment, and parenting classes. We wouldn’t be prosecuting people for being substance abusers ever, let alone for the next 60 days.”