Project geared to help reduce jail population
One project to streamline the processing of criminal justice in Muscogee County was launched this past spring, and has already begun to show positive results. Another is scheduled to begin early in the new year. Together, they might very well succeed not just in relieving jail crowding, but also in improving jail health and safety conditions.
The program already in place is the Rapid Resolution Initiative, which expedites processing of some of the simpler and more straightforward cases, including those of inmates who choose to plead guilty. The case moves through the system quickly instead of languishing for months, clogging up the docket (and already clogged jail space) needed for more serious and complicated cases.
Rapid Resolution enjoys the support of court officials and others involved in the process, including some who are ordinarily in adversarial roles, such as District Attorney's prosecutors and public defenders, as well as judges and law enforcement officers.
In February, something called the Muscogee County Jail Project will be launched by the Wright Legal Group of Columbus. It is described as a survey of every inmate in the jail, and will be conducted in conjunction with the Rapid Response Initiative.
Chaired by Wright managing partner Katonga Wright, the project will involve sheriff's, district attorney and public defender offices in a detailed analysis of the inmates, their offenses, and their progress through the system -- bonding procedures, safety and health issues while in custody, length of time to meet with an attorney and other such details.
Information about such details "helps everybody," Wright said. "It helps city officials from the budget side. It helps judges to have a better understanding. It shows the prosecutors and the defense attorneys what things they can be looking at, and it helps the jail address the jail population."
It will also, Wright said, help all those officials make better distinctions between those who truly belong in jail and those who would be better served by, and serve the community better by, some kind of alternative sentencing: "We don't typically benefit in any way having somebody sitting in jail who could be working and providing resources and time to their family."
Even before the launch of the jail project, the Rapid Resolution effort already seems to be paying off. Chief Assistant Public Defender Steve Craft said in an earlier Ledger-Enquirer interview that a drop in the jail population since the beginning of RRI had allowed officials, at least temporarily, to close a whole floor.
Ideally, information gleaned from the Muscogee County Jail Project will give local criminal justice officials what they need to keep that trend going in the right direction. This isn't about coddling lawbreakers. It's about protecting public safety more efficiently and affordably, and dealing with offenders more effectively.
This story was originally published December 28, 2015 at 5:13 PM with the headline "Project geared to help reduce jail population."