Support Local Journalism
Your membership makes our reporting possible.
{{featured_button_text}}
“Every Thursday the team meets together with low-level detainees who can be safely supervised in the community,” Jail Director Doug Burris said. “Before, there were C, D and E felonies that stayed here for an extended period of time and research found they had the lowest risk of re-offending.”
Bell said, “With serious and violent offenders, we are going to be more aggressive with prosecution. The overwhelming percentage of individuals at the justice center are there for serious offenses — 85 to 90%. So you can’t just say ‘Hey, we want to decrease the population,’ because that’s a public safety issue.”
It’s less clear what has led to the increase in the length of stay for inmates, Huebner said. The time spent in jail increased from an average of 14.9 days in 2010 to a high of 26.4 days in 2018, or an increase of about 77%. It dropped to 23.3 days in 2019.
One explanation could be bail amounts, Huebner said. Inmates with bail set higher than $5,000 have a tendency to remain jailed longer before trial, she said.
“A lot of people with $5,000 or $10,000 bail — it’s the same thing as having no bail, because they simply cannot pay it,” Huebner said.
Regardless of the charges, Burris said people are still being held too long before trial. Of the 891 people in the jail Monday, 147 had been there for over a year, he said. Sixty-eight had been there for more than two years, 33 more than three years, 10 more than four years and five for more than five years. One man has been held for more than six years, he said.
###[ad_2]
Originally Appeared Here