By Arthur Raymond
Deseret News
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — Though Salt Lake County law enforcement and criminal justice officials are playing their cards close, several ideas to reduce incarceration levels at Metro Jail surfaced Thursday following early releases of almost 100 prisoners over the weekend due to critical overcrowding at the county-operated facility.
David Litvack, director of the Salt Lake County Criminal Justice Advisory Council, said some proposals from his agency needed to remain under wraps, pending meetings next week, but he did say at least one modification could come in the county’s pretrial services program.
The program evaluates those booked on misdemeanor offenses and determines if staying out of jail until a court appearance is appropriate based on a variety of criteria including public safety, criminal history and stability. Litvack said changes to the program could make a difference in the number of those held at Metro while a trial date is pending.
“We’ve talked about changes that … would establish a whole new process,” Litvack said. “What it would really do is stem the flow of those that are in jail, pretrial.”
What those changes might be was not revealed, but Litvack did say it would require the participation and approval of the multiple agencies involved in the booking-to-trial process. Those include the district attorney’s office, the Legal Defender Association, law enforcement agencies along with corrections and court officials.
Paul Parker, Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Justice Division administrator, said Thursday that the district attorney’s office plays a serious role in the incarceration process since it makes the decision, in most of the cases, of whether to levy charges. Parker said the office would also field proposals next week on addressing in-flow issues but declined to elaborate. He did, however, stress the importance of dealing with capacity problems at Metro.
“The whole idea of jail overcrowding really addresses some fundamental issues … and there is not an easy solution to this problem,” Parker said.
Parker also mirrored Litvack’s contention that the solution would need to involve all of the agencies in the process, and that public safety would need to remain the top criterion.
Jackie Biskupski, an assistant to Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder, said some preliminary work had been done in implementing a new method of getting defendants in front of a judge quickly after booking. She said the sheriff’s department is exploring a program to utilize equipment now used at the Metro Jail to accommodate video participation in trials to put newly booked inmates in front of magistrates and judges in as short a time as possible. Biskupski said this could, in some cases, save days of jail time now being consumed by those waiting for an in-person court appearance.
For many, however, the big key to easing pressure on the limited number of beds at the Metro Jail is getting the Oxbow Jail back in operation. It was shut down in 2002 shortly after the opening of the Metro unit, but Salt Lake County approved last fall, and budgeted for, a plan to re-open 184 of the 560 beds at the facility to house inmates facing mental health and chemical dependency issues. Planned programs for Oxbow would focus on treatment and rehabilitation.
How to keep those plans on track for a scheduled July 1 reopening in the face of continuing declines in county revenues and subsequent budget reductions is still being worked out.
Copyright 2009 Deseret News