• Discussion: Jail Statistics Committee

• Discussion: State Public Policy Board Services Available to Assist with Study and Public Input

Chairperson Thompson called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 9:05 a.m. Members present were: Pat Harney, Mike Lehman, Terrence Neuzil, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson.

Thompson said the purpose of this meeting is for the Jail Statistics Work Group to share with the Board the information that has been collected over the past few months. She said they have been meeting for over a year to look at the numbers in the jail. They are looking at ways to alter the numbers by using suggestions from the National Institute of Corrections and other ideas offered in the community. She said the Jail Population Work Group consists of: County Attorney J. Patrick White, Legal Assistant Maureen Kelley, Public Defenders Office Employee Rick Klausner, Clerk of Court Employee Barb Bigelow, Department of Correctional Services Representative Richard Sells, Sheriff’s Office Major Duane Lewis and Deputy Jim Walsh. She said that Information Services Director Jean Schultz, Information Services Programmer Analyst II Carl Unternahrer, and Sheriff’s Office Communication Supervisor Jim Thayer also worked with the committee.

Thompson said the group met 5 times and at each meeting looked over the daily jail inmate list trying to collectively identify individuals who are not a danger to the community or a risk of flight; these individuals could therefore be considered stuck in the system and they could try to get them out. In the time that they met, she said, they only found 5 people that they felt the group’s actions could release from jail. She said they also tried to identify trends or patterns in the system that need to be changed; the information from the National Institute of Corrections suggested that they would find such patterns. They looked for patterns and found that the community has already made adjustments to the jail situation.

Thompson said there are 2 things she would like to focus on. She said the first is the extreme complexity of the judicial system. She presented a chart which shows how the system works. Thompson said that a new police officer within any jurisdiction in the County has an effect in the Clerks Office, County Attorneys Office, the court system and the Jail. If jail intake staff or space is limited, the officer might gather little information and inmates might be processed slowly. The Clerks Office relies on full information and if they are understaffed there might be delays, holding up other offices. Understaffing in the County Attorney’s Office could mean delays in making charging decisions and preparing for hearings, which could cause people to stay in jail longer. There might be delays in advocacy and hearings if there is lack of clerical staff in the Public Defenders Office which is the primary agency that argues for people to get out of jail. If they are not able to work efficiently then people could be in jail longer. Adult Corrections does pre-trial investigations and their work could be held up by delays in other offices. Lack of staff there could result in a lack of resources, such as half-way houses that allow jail inmates to be released. A lack of staff might also cause inadequate supervision of probationers, which would lead to recidivism. Thompson said that if an office is understaffed or unable to do its work efficiently at any point in the system, the end result is more people in jail.

Thompson pointed out that the County does not control all of these things. The County funds the County Attorneys Office and the Jail, but does not fund the Clerk of Courts Office, Public Defenders Office and Adult Corrections, nor have any control over the funding for those agencies or the resources that put into the County. Thompson said that since the Committee met in November and December, the Public Defenders Office, Clerk of Courts Office and Adult Corrections have had budget cuts.

Thompson said the group looked at the jail’s list of people incarcerated, the Johnson County people being housed in Linn County, and those released wearing electronic bracelets. She said the problem isn’t with the number of people brought to the jail, but with the classification system. Thompson said the Jail Inspector told them that people are able to sleep on the floor, if necessary, for 12 hours, but then they must be in a bed and adequate classification must be provided, according to sex, health status and level of risk to self or others. She said a person with a communicable disease must be kept separate and therefore takes up 2 beds since there are 2 beds per cell, with the exception of cellblock E, which is for females and has 4 beds. The Jail Inspector thinks that if they do the appropriate classification they would use an average of 70-72 beds per day out of 92 available beds. She said the jail averages are just above what the Jail Inspector thinks they should have, even though on the same days as the averages, there were more than 20 housed in Linn County. Thompson said lowering the intakes wouldn’t help the problem because of classification. Lehman asked how transporting inmates affects classification and why they don’t transport an inmate taking up 2 beds. Walsh said they aren’t able to take all of the problem inmates to Linn County. They do have some segregated people in Linn County, but primarily the long-term inmates are the ones kept under high bond. Thompson said she remembers Walsh said difficult prisoners could be housed in Linn County and asked if that jail is designed with some single cells. Walsh said Linn County has a lot of single cells and they are able to segregate the inmates better than Johnson County. Thompson said that would be a flaw in Johnson County’s jail design. Another problem she said is that the male female balance is problematic at times. She said that there are 12 beds set aside for females and sometimes they are fully used and sometimes they aren’t. Jim said they have taken several females to Linn County recently.

Thompson said there are some issues the Committee disagreed about that she wants to mention. Most of the Committee feels Johnson County faces a severe shortage of maximum and medium security beds and that minimum security isn’t that much of a problem. Sells believes additional levels of supervision and community programming could effectively address some of these issues, Thompson reported. The Committee recommended to the Board that this is an area to investigate further.

Thompson said she wants to point out some things that have happened since the meetings. She said that if a person is on probation and they violate their probation by committing another crime, the fact of their probation revocation goes to an administrative law judge and the new crime goes to the district court, which is duplication. She said that Klausner agreed to talk to an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) about this. White said it has been resolved; the Iowa Supreme Court ruled the Sixth District Project unconstitutional and the Administrative Law Judge is history. Thompson asked if this would expedite people’s movement through the jail or would they be held up in court like they were with ALJ. White said he doesn’t think there is an appreciable difference in the connection in regard to the process. He said he thinks the change will expedite it a little bit because they are moving away from an approach the ALJ took that carried cases forward more than some judges tend to do, but not because they’ve switched from an ALJ back to District Judges. Thompson said that Sells worked with the Public Defender to change a process that affected how the Public Defenders Office gets information. She said that has been put in place and might help this situation.

Thompson asked Bigelow if she had any luck with the expediting of initial appearances. Bigelow said that she hasn’t. She said she was informed by the person who does most of the scheduling, that the attorneys want a week before they get the defendant into court again for the initial appearance to give them time to get it into their schedule. If anyone wants a hearing sooner they would try to work it in. Bigelow said they do the hearings every day at 1:00. Thompson said that any delay means the person is going to be in jail if they aren’t released on bond. Bigelow said she doesn’t know that the person would necessarily be released at the initial appearance; it is kind of a formality to move on to set a final hearing.

Thompson said the Jail also had a work release program available with electronic monitoring that required the prisoner to take 3 days of electronic monitoring in lieu of one day in jail. The Public Defenders Office pointed out that a lot of people weren’t accepting that deal because they didn’t think it was as good as spending one day in jail. She said they did decide to reduce it from 3 days to 1, to 2 days to 1. Walsh said there are a few more participating now. Thompson said that jail staff noticed some inmates are being given high cash bonds and therefore remain in jail because they can’t raise the money. She said she sent an email to Carroll Edmundson, the Court Administrator, who responded that they couldn’t verify this but would look into it.

Thompson said the question of an alternate jail was discussed at length. Most of those on the Committee aren’t convinced that an alternate jail would lower the number of prisoners in Johnson County jail. She said there is a large unmet need of people that judges would put in jail if there were space. She said they are reluctant to recommend spending money on alternate jail arrangements until they are sure about this. They did recommend continuing the electronic monitoring with the 2 to 1 ratio and to continue to consider alternative levels of supervision. She said the Intensive Supervision Program (ISP) that was offered last summer would probably move some prisoners to electronic monitoring who would otherwise stay in jail. She said they think it is worth considering. Thompson said most of the Committee isn’t convinced they would save money with the program, but it does allow some treatment and would probably be a better alternative than jail for some prisoners. Thompson said the 3rd recommendation is to continue to explore an alternate jail site. She said the 4th recommendation is to have some meetings with judges regarding the process for initial appearances for probation violators. She asked if this is resolved now with the elimination of the Administrative Law Judge process. White said he doesn’t know if he would go that far. He assumes that the request for a week comes from the Defense Bar. Bigelow said that is what the scheduler indicated. White said that they are going to be less equipped to do next day initials. Thompson asked if this is because they don’t have enough staff to deal with the people coming in. White said it partly is.

White said there is a fairly serious legislative discussion going on right now to have Correctional Services stop doing interviews because a couple of legislators think it would save the State some money. White said it would have an enormous impact on jail capacity Statewide if they quit. Stutsman asked why it would have an impact. White explained that the pre-trial interviews gather background information and then make a recommendation to the court about whether someone could safely be released. He said the judges would have less information resulting in more people staying in jail. Stutsman said she can’t believe all of the things that are being shifted down to the County to pick up the costs.

Neuzil asked if the Committee talked about some of the trends, like the .08 impact. Thompson said the .08 didn’t come up much when the Committee was meeting. She asked what that would do to the Jail. Walsh said it seems logical that it would have an impact but how great of an impact remains to be seen. Neuzil agreed with Stutsman’s earlier comments about shifting costs from State to County. White said there is a proposal to create a committee within the Department of Corrections to do some funding for jails. He said that he thinks they are starting to realize that in order to avoid continued increases in prison population, there needs to be more emphasis in community-based corrections, including jails. He said that instead of cutting these things they need to have more of them to help with jail population. Stutsman said it is frustrating because the legislature doesn’t think through the repercussions of their decisions.

Neuzil asked what the Committee feels is the future when it comes to the trends. White said he thinks the Committee tried to look at the current system and see if they could identify options. He is convinced that they need more space and more capacity at all levels of the corrections system. He said the Committee didn’t address what the Board should do as a permanent solution. He said it is clear that they need one and he thinks it is going to be a combination of things.

Thompson said she worked Carl Unternahrer and Thayer in preparing numbers for a chart she presented. She said they went to the cities and asked them if there were ways that they could lower the number of people coming to the jail. She said that from 2000-2001 they did have a decrease in the number of intakes at the jail. She asked Unternahrer to explain the chart. Unternahrer said the 1st column, charges, represents the number of charges brought against all of the prisoners in the County. He said that the charges do not necessarily equal the number of people in jail since a person could go to jail with 5 different charges. He said the arrest days, or intakes, represents the number of arrest days for all of the different charges. He said that each person who comes to the jail is assigned an arrest day for their entire stay. He said that if they were there 10 days, the number of their arrest days is still only one. He said the number of unique persons would represent the number of unique people arrested for each of these agencies listed. He said a unique person simply represents the number of unique people brought in by that agency. Thompson said for example, that Coralville had 522 people brought to the jail 595 times on 933 charges. She said that their arrest days were down almost 10% over the 2 years. White mentioned that there are many variables. He said that in 2001 there were less officers out making arrests, which might be what contributed to the lower arrest days number. He said there just isn’t any way to really know. Thompson said they are working on the charge data so that they can eventually bring a chart to the Board showing what the charges are and how frequently people are brought to the jail on the various charges.

Thompson said some of the members of the Board went to the ISAC meeting and talked to people from the State Public Policy Board. Stutsman said this is a not-for-profit group located in Des Moines that is available to consult with communities in dealing with issues that are an impact on the communities. She said they have a wealth of experience and were originally founded by a former legislator who saw a need for communities to work through the public policy process. She said they talked to them about the County’s jail problem and what they could do to help. The State Public Policy Board outlined some things that they would be available to do, like structure some focus groups and get some input from the community on dealing with the issue. They do have a set fee that they charge and are real flexible to work with the County. She said that if the County has $10,000 they can ask them what that amount could do. Stutsman said that this is appealing because there might be ideas in the community that they haven’t looked into yet. She said that this is the sort of thing the Policy Board would draw into. Lehman said this group isn’t going to the legislature to lobby and change rules. He said they are going to look at the County’s situation and see what options they have and gather public input. He said the group has a history of doing this and does their homework because they already knew Johnson County’s situation. Stutsman said the group is very adamant about working with everyone and getting everyone to the table to understand the issue. Stutsman said the County has a long history of trying to do things as economically as possible, but sometimes the issues are too complex to do in-house and they need someone else to look at the bigger picture. Thompson said that if the County could name an amount they are willing to invest, the Policy Board would try to design something. She said that timing could also affect the price because they have times of the year when they are busier. Stutsman said the County needs to decide whether this is going to be their main focus for County dollars or look at other things to do.

Thompson asked if there is consensus to go ahead and contact them. Stutsman and Neuzil suggested they give a presentation and let the community hear what they are saying. White said he knows some of these people with the Public Policy Research Group and he thinks they are very capable people. He said that with county government, its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, which is its decentralization. He said the reality is, try as hard as you can, it is very difficult for a multi-member board to manage a project. White said that ultimately, the Board of Supervisors’ Executive Assistant would be the logical candidate to manage whatever new project emerges. He said he thinks the Public Policy Research Group as a project manager for public dialogue is a terrific idea. He said he knows them well enough to know they could do it very quickly and be reasonably economical as outside consulting groups go. White said the first step would be to invite them here to introduce themselves and to have public discussion about what they might be able to do. Thompson said they should probably hear what the Sheriff thinks. She asked those from the Sheriffs Office to share this with him and get his opinion is. Walsh said he doesn’t think Carpenter would have a problem with this and that he would let him know what was discussed.

Stutsman said she is very impressed with this report and the work the Committee has done. She appreciates everybody’s hard work in trying to address this. White said Thompson is the primary author of the report and that she did a great job of capturing a lot of the discussion. Thompson thanked the Committee.

Adjourned at 9:55 a.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By Casie Parkins, Recording Secretary