We Need to Broaden Our Thinking and Understanding
To build or not to build—a new Spokane County Jail—that is the question that keeps popping up in our community—as though it were the best way to address crime. Outgoing Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich’s cites not getting a new Jail built as his biggest regret. That is far too narrow a focus.
The trouble is that most of us, including me, have had only a rudimentary understanding of how Spokane County Detention Services fits into the complex system of prosecutors, judges, courts, and state and federal prisons that we collectively refer to as our criminal justice system. In my youth I watched too many westerns in which justice consisted of apprehending the inevitably rotten-to-the-core bad guy and throwing him in jail. Real life is seldom so simple.
Spokane County Detention Services is comprised of both the downtown Spokane County Jail pictured above and the Geiger Corrections Center. It is tempting to think of the two facilities as a warehouse in which guilty criminals are simply incarcerated. If that were true (which it is not, as we shall see), then simply building a bigger County Jail to put all the criminals in would be a logical conclusion. In reality, however, Spokane County Detention Services is best thought of as a sort of holding area in the workings of a complex criminal justice system.
The number of folks on the “inmate roster” of Detention Services’ holding tank (including both facilities) is variable, determined by several inputs and outputs. The number of people booked into the system by law enforcement (with the aid of the prosecutor’s office) for alleged violations of law is the major input. The speed and accuracy with which lawyers, courts, and judges process the cases against these people determines the output: either to other institutions (e.g. the state penitentiary), treatment facilities, or to freedom.
Broadly speaking, the workings of the lawyers, courts, and judges do as much to determine the size of the inmate population (and pressure to build a new Jail) as the arrests and delivery of accused persons to Detention Services by law enforcement. To make the whole system work better, to get better control of crime, and to reduce the population of inmates and the pressure to build a new jail we might (among other things) invest in improvements to the court system.
The Spokane County Superior Court currently has County funding for twelve judgeships. The Superior Court manages many of the cases of the inmates held in the two Detention Services facilities, and the Superior courts are chronically backlogged. This has been a problem for decades. In 1997 the Washington State legislature authorized Spokane County (via its County Commission) to fund a thirteenth Spokane County Superior Court Judgeship. That judgeship might have relieved some of the jail crowding by improving the output side of the jail population equation. But…for the last 25 years…the Spokane County Commissioners, dominated by Republicans consistently in favor of spending money for a new jail, have utterly failed to move forward on this improvement.
Maggie Yates is running against incumbent Commissioner Al French for the District 5 seat (SW Spokane County) on the new five member Spokane County Commission. Last Friday (September 30) she took on Mr. French in a debate hosted by the Rotary of Spokane. (You can watch it here.) The very first question (starting at 8:05 in the video) was: Would you commit to provide funding for the 13th judgeship? Mr. French’s answer was twofold: First he blamed the Covid pandemic dislocation for the backlog, even though the 13th judgeship was approved 25 years ago at a time when there was already a backlog. Next, he informed the audience that it would be prohibitively expensive: not just a judges salary, but support staff and a whole new courtroom (at, he said, $1M dollar capital cost). Of course, he neglected to discuss how those expenses would compare to the cost of the new downtown County Jail he favors. (The current Jail was built in 1986 at a cost of $22M.) Ms. Yates’ response (at 10:00 in the video) was to cite 25 years of inaction on this judgeship as a glaring failure of planning on the part of the County Commissioners. Mr. French has had twelve years on the (currently) three person Spokane County Commission during which he might have addressed this issue.
Do we need a new jail? The current Spokane County Jail opened in July 1986 as a state-of-the-art facility designed to hold 460 inmates, each with their own cell. As had happened several times in previous decades, it quickly filled. By 1995 it held 555 inmates, by 2004 there were 690. Calculating the number of inmates currently in the County Jail is slightly complicated since, for a number of years, some inmates under Spokane County Detention Services are held at Geiger Corrections Center (situated just south of Geiger Field (GEG) between Geiger Blvd and the airport runways). According to the very useful monthly Spokane County Jail Population Snapshot (a bit of a misnomer, since the data covers both facilities, not just the Jail) Detention Services held a total of 844 inmates as of August 31, 2022. Extracting data from the Snapshot suggests that 515 inmates subject to the local Spokane court systems were then held at the downtown Spokane County Jail—along with nearly all of 143 inmates from “Other Jurisdictions”, including the federal government (U.S. Marshalls), for a total of 658. That is almost 200 bodies (43%) over the design capacity of 460 of the existing Jail. Another 179 inmates were held at Geiger Correctional (although they, too, could be stuffed into the downtown Jail in the next couple weeks on account of staffing issues).
Naively, I thought that most of the inmate population housed by Spokane County Detention Services (both facilities) consisted of people already sentenced to serve time there. That is almost completely wrong. According to the August 31, 2022, Snapshot, 543 inmates were categorized as “Pre-Trial – No Hold”, meaning that these are “individuals with pending charges who do not have a detainer order and could be immediately released on bond.” If you’re curious, scroll through the Inmate Roster and check out the details of those who are “bondable”. Furthermore, the term “Pre-Trial” is itself a bit of a misnomer, since only a small fraction of inmates ever have a trial of the sort most of us think of. Much more common is a “plea deal”. The defendant, threatened with the severest charges the Spokane County Prosecutor’s office under County Prosecutor Larry Haskell can apply to the alleged crime, agrees to plead guilty to a lesser charge rather than face losing a jury trial and being sentenced under the higher charge. Again, on August 31, 543inmates of the 844 total held by Detentions Services were “innocent until proven guilty” pending action by the justice system.
Sixty-nine more inmates were “Pre-Trial – Hold”, meaning they are not bondable and would not be released even if bond were posted, i.e. a judge has decided these folks should not be let out on the street.
Only 81 of the 844 inmates were post sentencing. Detention Services only keeps inmates who have been sentenced to serve less than a year, almost always for some form of misdemeanor. All those with longer sentences are eventually sent off to the prison system of the Washington State Department of Corrections.
Bottom line: The majority of inmates occupying space at Spokane County Detention Services (the County Jail and Geiger Corrections, collectively) are held there pending judgement by the criminal justice system—and many of those waiting inmates could be free (and not a threat to society) while awaiting judgement—if they could “make bail” or if other means were available to be sure they re-appear for their court date. Providing the funding for a thirteenth Superior Court Judge would certainly help by speeding up the process that now expensively detains hundreds of inmates in legal limbo in crowded circumstances bordering on inhumane. Building a new Spokane County “downtown” Jail without funding a thirteenth Superior Court Judgeship would be getting the cart before the horse.
It is time to understand, invest in, and adjust the entire criminal justice system in Spokane County—from law enforcement, Detention Services, bail reform, and support and diversion options to expanding and speeding up the judicial process. If that includes funding and building a new state-of-the-art County Jail, then so be it—but let’s not pretend that a new Jail is the only solution. As a community we will pay either way: either with the economic and social cost of a frustrating level of crime or with the cost to make the necessary investments to improve the system.
That Commissioner French can advocate for a new Jail while pretending that funding a 13th Superior Court Judgeship is too expensive is a sign of the current Spokane County Board of Commissioners sclerotic thinking. It is time to stretch our understanding and involvement. This November vote for Maggie Yates, the candidate in District 5 with detailed knowledge of the local criminal justice landscape; Chris Jordan in District 1; Amber Waldref in District 2; and Mary Kuney in District 4.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
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