By Rich Lord and Kate Giammarise
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
PITTSBURGH — The Allegheny County Jail is crowded, but not with violent convicts.
Of the lockup’s population of around 2,300, roughly 1 in 5 is charged with, or convicted of, a violent offense. Similarly, only 1 in 5 is there serving a sentence of any kind, according to researchers affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Institute of Politics, whose report on incarceration in Allegheny County was released last week.
To a degree far above national averages, most of the jail’s denizens are there awaiting trial on property, drug or public order crimes, or because they violated probation, according to the report, called “Criminal Justice in the 21st Century: Improving Incarceration Policies and Practices in Allegheny County.” Even in a country that imprisons its citizens at a rate unmatched in the developed world, Allegheny County stands out.
The cost to taxpayers of housing a person in the jail averages $77.40 a day, and the report’s authors estimated that with reforms, some $12 million in spending could be redirected.
“The system can be made fairer and more cost-effective,” said institute chairman Mark Nordenberg, a co-chair of the report team, even as it “can achieve even higher levels of community safety.”
The report found that the overreliance on jail starts at the beginning of the process. District judges aren’t supposed to jail defendants awaiting trial unless they are dangers to the community or flight risks. But in nearly 2 of 5 cases, district judges ignore computer-generated risk assessments. In doing so, they’re usually placing monetary bond on defendants who are low risks to flee or cause harm, said former U.S. Attorney Fred Thieman, the team’s other co-chair.
The frequent use of monetary bond means that poor defendants — often including the mentally ill and drug abusers — stay locked up regardless of their charges, while those with assets go free even if they face more serious accusations, Mr. Thieman said.
The costs to the jailed person can include job loss, child custody problems and eviction. That can create circumstances in which the person is more likely to offend again, the report found. People jailed for four to seven days were 50 percent more likely to commit future crimes than those who were free while awaiting trial.
“We take away the rights of the individual to succeed when we use this type of system” to create a sense of criminal justice, said Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, at the report’s Wednesday unveiling.
The impact falls disproportionately on African Americans. The report found that the booking rate for black men in Allegheny County is nearly double the national average. Nationally, African-American males are six times more likely to be locked up than white males, according to The Sentencing Project, an advocacy organization that supports alternatives to incarceration.
The bias toward incarceration continues to the very end of the case.
One of the system’s final decisions is the length of a defendant’s probation, determined by judges in the Court of Common Pleas. Nationally, the average length of probation for all crimes is 22 months. In Allegheny County, the average probation term for misdemeanors is 30 months, and for felonies it’s 60 months, according to the report. That results in more probation violations, which often mean a return to jail.
There is local precedent for cooperation toward reduced incarceration.
Two years ago, Common Pleas judges and the Adult Probation Office began examining the use of detainers, which are orders that send someone to jail who violates the terms of their probation or parole or if they are arrested on new charges.
The jail, built for 1,850, was then pushing up against its maximum population of about 2,850 inmates.
The goal was to reduce the number of people in jail for what were less serious offenses or for what were considered more “technical” violations, such as not paying court costs, testing positive for drugs or failing to register a change of address, said Common Pleas Judge David R. Cashman.
“What I found out when I got the initial report was rather astounding — almost half of the people in jail were being detained,” rather than serving sentences or awaiting trial, Judge Cashman said.
Inmates on detainers cannot get out of jail by paying bail and must get the order lifted by a judge.
Judges now examine monthly who is in the jail on detainers.
“This still protects society, but not punish[ing] someone for making a mistake,” Judge Cashman said.
This work has helped cut jail population and costs, and freed up separate spaces for the handful of male and female juveniles in the jail, Judge Cashman said. The juveniles are in the jail because they have been charged as adults.
“You don’t want a 15- or 16-year-old in with a 29-year-old,” Judge Cashman said. “By reducing jail population, we have freed up pods. Now we have a pod that is solely devoted to juveniles who have been charged as adults.”
Criminal justice still takes up 42 cents out of every property tax dollar, according to the institute’s report. Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, who asked for the institute’s report, said he could “think of ways we’d much rather spend this money, assuming, of course, that public safety isn’t compromised.”
The report, crafted by a 40-person working group, recommends that:
• Police, courts and prosecutors should work together to find the earliest possible opportunities to get nonviolent suspects out of custody and into treatment and support services.
• Prosecutors should guard against overcharging.
• Public defenders should be available at preliminary arraignments, when initial decisions on incarceration or release are made.
• More police should be trained to handle mental health crises, and those officers who have the training should take more people to an underutilized recovery center.
• Judges should carefully weigh the costs of lengthy probation terms.
• The savings could be spent on more police, probation officers and programs to help people to stay out of trouble.