The High Cost of Jail-
Part 2
By Albert B. Kelly
Last week in this space, I
outlined some of the economic costs associated with local jails and our
tendency to lock up people up. The data comes courtesy of the Vera Institute
and their detailed study entitled “Incarceration’s Front Door: The Misuse of
Jails in America”.
As background, there are
over 3,000 jails in the U.S. with approximately 12 million admissions. On any
given day there are 730,000 people in jail, 75% for nonviolent offenses (i.e.,
traffic or low-level drug possession). In 1982, the average stay was 14 days,
now it is 23 days. We spend $22 billion a year on local jails, up 235% since
the early 1980’s.
While one focus is the
cost to tax payers; it is also important to look at the issue in terms of the
impact that even brief stays have on the people cycling through jail. We’re not
talking about violent criminals, or career criminals, but low-level offenses
involving where people can’t make bail.
Understanding how things
play out if you don’t have the money or any way to get it is worth considering
because we have a vested interest in people becoming more stable productive
citizens by putting the past behind them and pulling themselves up by their own
bootstraps.
It starts when you can’t
scrap together the money to get out of jail; overnight turns into a few days-
maybe a week or two-sometimes longer. If you work and you’re fortunate enough
to keep your job, you will lose wages. With the offense come fines, fees, and
surcharges. The Vera report points out that many jails now charge for clothing,
room and board, medical care, rehab services and expenses related to booking
If the person is receiving
any public assistance, it is likely to be cut-off. With these costs and the
loss of income or the loss of a job, other bills start to pile up. Depending on
how things go from there, people can lose apartments; suffer utility shut offs,
separation from children and a host of other disruptions.
I’m not arguing that all
who find themselves in this situation are saints; nor am I arguing that there
shouldn’t be a price to pay. But if we’re thinking not only about the cost to
taxpayers but about the impact on families; these outcomes create more instability
and cause more damage to communities than the original offense.
According to the Vera
study, in 1982, there were 51 admissions for every 100 arrests; in 2012 it was
95 admissions for every 100 arrests. The point is that we would do well to find
alternatives that not only free up taxpayer dollars, but more importantly,
lessen the chaos and instability in the lives of the families impacted.
Pre-booking diversion
programs such as those used in King County, Washington where low-level drug and
prostitution offenses are steered away from the criminal justice system and
toward community-based services are yielding results.
In terms of mental
illness, the study points out that 14.5% of men and 31% of woman in jails were
suffering from serious mental illness; while 17% of those in jail with mental
illnesses of some kind were homeless in the year prior to their arrest a third
were unemployed in the month prior to their arrest. Among jail inmates, 47% do
not have a GED or high school diploma and 68% have a history of drug or alcohol
abuse.
If we were to focus
resources on helping these individuals get education and training, drug
treatment, or treatment for mental illness, we would go a long way toward
breaking the arrest-admission cycle and we would keep them connected to their
families- possibly working and certainly paying their bills (and their fines).
In 2013, of 790,649 jail
inmates, 59,441 were supervised outside of jail. That’s 8%; that tells us that
there’s potential to create more out-of-jail supervision and treatment options.
There are over 3,000 jails in the U.S., approximately 2,800 drug courts, and
300 mental health courts. To succeed at breaking the arrest-admission cycle, we
need more drug and mental health courts.
We can continue as we are
with ever-increasing arrests and jail admissions for those whose problems are
mostly substance abuse-related, mental health-related, connected to homeless or
a lack of marketable job skills but it will only lead to more of the same. I
think it’s time we got serious about trying alternatives to jail. A lot of
lives hang in the balance.