Despite streamlining program, jail crowding problem resurfaces

Just a couple of years ago, an effort endorsed and designed by judges, law enforcement officials and attorneys on both sides of the criminal justice “aisle” came out of the gate a remarkable success. A program called the Rapid Resolution Initiative was launched in July of 2015, a process of expediting the simpler and more straightforward cases through the courts so as not to clog up jail space with inmates who could be fined, transferred, freed or given alternative sentencing.

By November, the program had already saved more than $400,000 in direct jail costs — an amount that covered most of the $458,000 annual cost of the program. The jail had not been a maximum capacity since the program had been implemented, and the recidivism rate (for only a four-month span, to be sure) was negligible.

Two years after the introduction of Rapid Resolution, the Muscogee County Jail is again over capacity, and nobody seems quite sure exactly why. It’s possible, maybe even likely, that the problem would be far worse without the expedited processing program; but that doesn’t eliminate the problem the city faces right now.

“I just met with judges and we’re sending information to the DA and the Public Defender and the Chief of Probation about all the people we have in the jail,” Sheriff Donna Tompkins told the Ledger-Enquirer’s Alva James-Johnson last week. “We’re trying to get everybody to work toward moving some of these people somehow, somewhere, some way.”

In a paradoxical way, the current crunch might be a victim of the program’s past success: It was so effective in its first year that officials were able to close a whole floor at the jail. That floor, Tompkins said, could accommodate up to 100 inmates, but the department doesn’t have the eight additional officers that staffing it would require.

The most alarming reason given for the increase comes from the sheriff herself: a high number of violent crime suspects. There are now at least 60 murder defendants in the jail, Tomkins said: “What we’re seeing that we’re maintaining in our jail is really more people charged with violent offenses … The people that are in for possession of marijuana, or even possession of cocaine, or something like that, they’re making bond, they’re getting out. It’s not those who are left.”

But there’s also an apparent bottleneck of parole violators, inmates who are not violent, but aren’t “bondable,” Tompkins said. She estimated there are 100 of those cases in the jail, “which is why we’re trying to notify the Department of Community Services.”

The current squeeze might be a temporary anomaly, or it might be reason to take another look at whether Rapid Resolution can be expanded. If the problem persists, it will only become more dangerous for inmates and corrections officers alike. If so, it will definitely be time to revisit the jail expansion idea that was tabled earlier this year.

This story was originally published August 21, 2017 at 5:23 PM with the headline "Despite streamlining program, jail crowding problem resurfaces."