By Caleb Bedillion
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo
TUPELO -- Some Lee County officials increasingly believe that incarceration alternatives intended to keep some non-violent offenders out of prison and ease the strain of jail overcrowding are inaccessible to the poor.
This conclusion has motivated at least one Justice Court judge to propose that the Board of Supervisors consider absorbing some costs associated with ankle monitors.
Judge Chuck Hopkins offered this proposal during a Wednesday morning meeting between District 1 Supervisor Phil Morgan and three of the county’s four Justice Court judges.
That meeting was the latest among recent efforts by Lee County and city of Tupelo leaders to alleviate the county’s historically overcrowded jail. This overcrowding has threatened to produce dangerous conditions for inmates and Sheriff’s Department personnel alike, and local municipalities have increasingly found their budgets under pressure from incarceration costs.
“Our goal, since we didn’t move forward with building a jail, we’re trying to find ways to reduce the jail population,” Morgan told Justice Court judges Wednesday.
The Justice Court system handles small-dollar civil matters, misdemeanor criminal charges and most preliminary hearings for felony cases.
Morgan stressed to judges that he does not intend to dictate how they should perform their jobs. He did ask, however, that where the law allows, they increasingly consider the use of ankle monitoring and the county work center. The work center allows non-violent, low-risk male offenders to work for the county during the day, spend their off-time in a low-security facility and earn release faster.
Discussion quickly raised an oft-ignored fact: programs like ankle monitoring, intended to keep people out of jail, often force the poor behind bars because they can’t afford to pay the extra fees charged by private companies for these programs.
“They get stuck in this rut,” Hopkins said.
Routine traffic violations, for example, can lead to a suspended license if someone doesn’t or can’t pay the fine. If the person keeps driving, to keep a job, say, that can lead to additional charges, further fines and escalating legal penalties, with alternatives to prison time accompanied by their own price tags.
“It just snowballs,” Hopkins said. “You get buried in debt.”
Hopkins said in an interview that under current practices, ankle monitoring is typically only ordered by Justice Court judges as an additional bond release requirement for defendants accused of serious crimes.
“If it was a $1 million bond for a murderer or a rapist, that monitor gives us just a little bit of extra security,” Hopkins told the Daily Journal.
But ankle monitoring may have wider applicability.
Hopkins said offenders are typically offered an installment option to pay off a fine, if needed. For those unable to even pay on installment or for those who consistently miss installments, jail time is the alternative.
Once in jail, inmates receive credit at the rate of $25 per day against their fines. If healthy and willing to work, non-violent offenders can be sent to the county work center and earn credit against fines twice as fast, at the rate of $50 per day.
Hopkins believes monitoring could provide an effective alternative.
“If someone hasn’t been paying on their fees, I could put them back out there and give them another chance but ask them to wear this monitor,” Hopkins said. “I think at least being able to know where someone is, that would motivate a lot of people.”
The monitors require someone to pay up, however. According to his own personal research, Hopkins said the cheapest vendor he’s found charges $4 per day.
He plans to appear before the Lee County Board of Supervisors Monday to propose that the county consider absorbing these monitoring costs rather than passing them on to the offender.
Those costs would be more than offset by the savings generated by keeping that person out of jail, the judge believes.
For his part, Morgan said he’s open to the possibility.
Hopkins also advocates that the county consider allowing work center inmates to go home at night, rather than serve out their off-work hours in county custody, another initiative Morgan said he’s willing to consider.
Shifting the work center toward a quasi-house arrest arrangement could create increased participation and open the option to females. The Lee County work center currently has only male accommodations.
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(c)2017 the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal (Tupelo, Miss.)