Judge about jail rate request: ‘Public needs an explanation’

Oklahoma County jail inmates have been overcharged for years for the days they spent locked up, a judge has concluded.

“I’m appalled,” District Judge Ray C. Elliott said Thursday during a hearing over what the daily incarceration rate should be this year.

The daily incarceration rate is based on a calculation that begins with the total operating costs of the jail during the last fiscal year. Sheriff John Whetsel submits a cost sheet each year for judicial approval of the rate.

The judge Thursday became upset after discovering that total has included such unrelated things as a percentage of the salaries paid to court clerk employees, county juvenile justice bureau workers and the county public defender’s staff.

“How in the world can you justify that?” the judge asked angrily and repeatedly as he went over the so-called indirect costs added to the jail’s total operating costs. “I think the public needs an explanation.”

He was particularly upset the indirect costs included a percentage of the operation of the Oklahoma County Community Sentencing Program.

The judge is personally involved in overseeing the state-funded sentencing

program and suggested the sheriff needs to write the program a check.

“Wow!” the judge said. “That’s almost mindboggling.”

During the hearing, the judge stopped short of calling the numbers fraudulent, but he did remark that numbers can be manipulated to say anything a manipulator wants.

Sheriff responds

Elliott has approved the daily incarceration rate for years. He is taking a closer look this year at a time of growing public concern that convicts face too many costs after release. Critics complain some convicts simply give up or steal to try to pay off the burdensome costs.

Oklahoma County jail inmates currently are being charged $44.51 per day, if convicted. Acquitted inmates do not have to pay.

The judge had been asked on Feb. 4 to approve a new rate of $48.05 per day. At the hearing Thursday, the judge was asked to approve a revised rate of $41.48 per day. The judge put off a decision until March 3 to get more information.

The rate was revised because the sheriff on Wednesday agreed to drop the indirect costs — $5.7 million — from the total used to calculate the rate. The sheriff did so at the insistence of District Attorney David Prater.

The judge commended Prater, who was at the hearing. The judge, though, criticized the sheriff for initially including indirect costs in this year’s proposal and in proposals in previous years. He told the sheriff’s finance officer, Capt. Jon Skuta, he was appalled.

The judge acknowledged he had approved daily incarceration rates that were too high, because of the indirect costs, in past years.

Whetsel was not at the hearing Thursday but met with the judge privately Friday morning.

“The spreadsheet that we use is developed by the U.S. Marshals Service,” the sheriff told The Oklahoman on Friday. “It’s used all over the country. It’s used all over the state of Oklahoma in setting the rate of incarceration.”

He said his office has used the federal form, which allows indirect costs to be added to the total, for at least 18 years.

“This is something we’ve been using forever, and it hasn’t ever been questioned before both before the court and also with the district attorney’s office,” the sheriff said.

He said, though, he had no problem with taking the indirect costs out of the proposal.

“To me, it doesn’t matter what the rate is. It’s immaterial,” Whetsel said. “We recover very little of our costs anyway. Whether it’s $40, $41 or $48, it’s not the issue of what it is.”

He said a daily incarceration rate has to be set by law. He said he is not trying to get as much money as he can.

“All we’re trying to do is set it at whatever it might be. Sometimes we go up. Sometimes we go down,” the sheriff said.

Costs too high?

Public Defender Bob Ravitz said Thursday it was absurd a percentage of his office’s payroll — 37.81 percent — was counted as part of the jail’s operating costs.

“It made me very mad,” Ravitz said. “I have spoken out about these oppressive costs on poor people for a long time. And to see that they were using a portion of my budget to get additional money is abhorrent to me.”

The longtime defense attorney called for the state auditor to conduct a special audit of the sheriff’s revenue and expenses.

“There’s not enough

CUSTOMER SERVICE staffing in the jail,” Ravitz said. “Maybe there needs to be a discussion on how much is used for patrol and how much is used for the operation of the jail. When people can’t get out of the jail for 24, 48 hours after they’ve made a bond or been acquitted or given probation, or lawyers can’t get in on a regular basis, there’s a serious problem.”

He also said no inmate should be required to pay any jail stay bills until the

OUR COMMITMENT TO ACCURACY audit is complete.

At the hearing Thursday were five leaders of an organization called VOICE — Voices Organized in Civic Engagement.

They have been focusing on raising awareness on how much the fines and fees charged former inmates are hurting families.

“I was really glad to hear the judge asking the questions,” said one VOICE leader, Sundra Flansburg. “I think for so many years it’s kind of been a rubber stamp deal.”

She provided The Oklahoman a sheriff’s bill for $11,625 given to a released inmate who couldn’t read or write. The bill told the man he had three months to pay.

“The man ... took it to his pastor, saying how overwhelmed he felt. Almost understandably, he disappeared shortly thereafter,” she said.