Faced with an overcrowded jail and an underused juvenile detention center, Lane County is looking to raise funds to expand its criminal justice system.
Nearly 4,500 prisoners left the county jail before completing their sentences last year, and Sheriff Jan Clements hopes voters will approve measures 20-38 and 20-39 this November to cut that number back. Stephen Carmichael, director for the John Serbu Youth Campus at the Lane County Juvenile Justice Center, is also campaigning for the measures because he says they will force more young offenders to face the consequences of their crimes.
But the opposition, led by grassroots political activist Steve Kutcher, says that if voters approve the measures, they will provide funding for unnecessary prisons.
Ballot Measure 20-38 would generate $10 million a year for four years by increasing property taxes 55 cents for every $1,000 of assessed property value. These funds would support a larger population at the county inmate work camp and Juvenile Justice Center, add staff to supervise the increased populations and open a female wing of the juvenile center’s alcohol and drug treatment center.
Ballot Measure 20-39 would provide more than $8 million to build a new jail intake center that would allow the incoming population to increase by 65 people. Like 20-38, Measure 20-39 would raise property taxes by 3 cents for every $1,000 of assessed property value.
Carmichael said the two initiatives are vital to preserve the effectiveness of the county’s justice system because without adequate funding, juveniles won’t learn they can be held responsible for their actions.
“Last year we had about 5,000 crimes, but we had only 36 beds,” he said. “There’s no way to hold kids responsible.”
In addition to not learning a lesson, offenders also know their stay in the detention center could be short, he said.
“They all know that we’re full, and if someone comes in they know someone has to be going out,” he said.
If the two measures pass, Carmichael said the Department of Youth Services can staff another holding area at the justice center to increase its population by 32. He said the increase will allow the county to handle about 2,000 juveniles a year.
“We’ll be able to hold them for four to five days,” Carmichael said, “That’s enough for most kids to get the message there are consequences.”
Clements also said that it’s hard to make inmates feel punished when they know they have a chance to get out of prison early. Under federal regulations passed in 1986, all jails have to keep their populations at certain levels by releasing inmates through a matrix system that figures which criminals pose the least threat to society. Clements said this entails a constant “juggling act” with inmates to ensure the wrong ones are not released.
The number of prisoners released has steadily decreased since it reached its peak in 1997, when Clements said that for “every 100 people booked in, we threw 45 out the door.” Now the release rate is about 29 percent, and Clements said if the two measures pass the release rate could possibly drop to below 20 percent.
There are currently 485 total beds at the county jail and 120 at the county work camp, an isolated minimal security facility that is currently only housing 30 inmates because of a lack of funds. Clements said that if the funding is secured, the work camp could be brought to capacity and that would free extra space at the jail so the new intake center could be built.
“We have 120 beds at the work camp and the measures will bring another 90 on-line,” he said. “The domino effect is even when we’re building this intake center we’ve got 90 beds.”
Clements said the new intake center needs to be built because the current center’s foundation is sinking.
The measures will also provide funding for the increased staff necessary to supervise all the extra prisoners and improve the aging heating and cooling systems in the jail, which Clements said are vital to keep inmates from growing belligerent.
“You don’t want to get into a situation where you give inmates a reason to riot,” he said.
Kutcher, however, said the reasons to vote for the measures are completely unsound. The local activist, who has worked on previous political campaigns, said he is organizing a committee to oppose the measures on the grounds that they are unnecessary.
“The crime rate is going down and instead of decreasing the number of prisons they’re increasing it,” he said.
Kutcher agreed prisons are crowded, but said that’s because the county is convicting people who don’t need to be convicted.
“The major problem is there’s a bunch of people in jail who shouldn’t be there because of victimless crimes,” he said.
Victimless crimes, in Kutcher’s opinion, mostly include drug possession. He argued the county should look at other crimes instead of prosecuting the “victimless” ones.
“Crimes against our environment they don’t take very seriously,” he said. “There’s crimes all over our county against air and water that go ignored.”
Not only does Kutcher see the prisons as unnecessary, he views them as money-making machines for “the big construction companies that buy politicians.” He said their purpose could just as easily be achieved through preventive programs rather than incarceration, but the system just perpetuates itself.
“The criminal justice system is you just keep building the jails. They’ll fill up – they’ll go out and find the prisoners to fill them,” he said.