The Closer the Better
By Albert B. Kelly
As an elected official, it is one of those decisions that must be made, but it’s really about deciding which option is less bad. I’m talking about the decision to close the County jail and house inmates elsewhere. On the one hand, there is the need to be good stewards of public monies and that includes protecting taxpayers across the board. On the other hand, the impact of closing the jail runs far and deep in the lives of those who find themselves in the system.
Cumberland County will be closing its jail and housing those in the system at jails in other counties. Having decided that this is the best course given the circumstances, my hope is that every effort will be made to keep defendants as close to home as possible. I recognize that in some cases, we’re talking about people charged with a crime or a series of crimes, some very serious, and that makes it hard to give a damn. In other cases, maybe an offense is nonviolent or less serious.
I understand that we’re talking about inmates and as a group, they’re among the least likely to gain our sympathy, throw in race and ethnicity, and for some it gets even harder. Yet I remind myself that we’re talking about someone’s family member; a father, son, mother, brother, husband or whatever. That matters, even just a little, because if someone is going to make the decision to try and live within the lines, they’ll need the help and support of the few who genuinely do give a damn.
As a general rule of thumb, families of detainees struggle to keep their heads above the poverty line. This means that a two or three hour trip to visit their incarcerated loved one is not something easily accomplished. Some might have the means to get their on their own, but others will be relying on public transportation and this will come with its own costs in time and money. The end result is that visitation will be a thing of the past.
But setting aside the human interest aspects, there is the integrity of our system of justice to consider. I’m aware that cynicism rules the day, but at the core of our system there is the presumption of innocence, that someone charged with a crime is assumed to be innocent until they have been proven guilty. This presumption doesn’t translate into people walking around free in the community until their day in court, many remain in lock-up, but that’s all the more reason to consider carefully how far we’re willing to separate people from their families and communities.
There’s also the impact on someone’s ability to prepare for a trial. We’re all aware that the vast majority of those serving a sentence are doing so courtesy of the plea agreement- that only a very small fraction of those serving out a sentence have been convicted by a jury of their peers. This is partly because defending a case costs a lot of money most defendants don’t have and partly because prosecutors incentivize taking the plea by offering less time than if someone is convicted at trial.
I suppose this is what keeps the system from completely seizing up because if even 20% more defendants went to trial, the system might well crash. But for those who actually do want to mount a defense at trial, how will distance impact that effort? Hopefully we will limit the distance to our nearby counties because the difficulties and costs of schlepping across the state so that a defendant and their attorney can meet and plan for trial will place them at an even greater disadvantage.
We already know that public defenders are too few, underpaid, overworked, and overloaded to the point where they’re not able to give either the innocent or the guilty the time and attention needed to make the reality of our justice system match our hopes for it and that was before Covid with the jail nearby. Going forward on this side of Covid, fighting through a pandemic-fueled backlog that will take years to clear, how much harder it will be for public defenders to do a competent job if it turns out that their clients will be shipped halfway across the state, for the sake of justice the closer to home the better.