Prison overflow strains limits at some county jails

In a Shoshone County jail cell surrounded by black iron bars and filled with bunks, Gary Crider lounges on a mattress with a novel.

One bunk in the cell is a makeshift library; in place of a mattress are rows of dog-eared paperbacks.

Crider has plenty of time to read – he’s not eligible for parole until 2016, when he will have served the fixed portion of a sentence he received for attempted murder stemming from a 1998 shootout with Bonner County deputies.

He’s not sure how long he’ll be staying in the Shoshone County jail, where he’s being held temporarily after attending a court hearing in Bonner County. But as far as jails go, “this is the best county jail in the state,” Crider said. “The staff is outstanding. The food is excellent.”

State prison inmates are getting a chance to rate county jails as the state juggles prisoners in an effort to fit them into a system with too few beds. More and more, the state is depending on county jails to handle the overflow.

This year, the state Department of Correction budgeted to house 240 prisoners per day in county jails. But the number has climbed to around 400 recently. If room runs out at the county level, Idaho may have to start sending inmates out of state.

There are about 6,000 beds in the prison system – but more than 6,300 offenders, said Teresa Jones, Department of Correction spokeswoman.

The state is building a women’s housing unit for 134 inmates and has plans to build a temporary facility for another 100 inmates. The growth of inmates outpaces the state’s ability to hold them, however.

“They sent some people out of state and opened up a new women’s area in Boise, and now they’re right back where they were,” said Bill Lynn, director of the Idaho Sheriffs’ Association. “Every week, it goes up a little. Really, they’re in quicksand.”

Because of the bed shortage, state prisoners are staying longer in county jails before being transported to the state penitentiary.

Whether this is a good or bad situation depends on the county.

The Kootenai County jail, for instance, hardly has room for its own inmates. And the state reimbursement rate doesn’t come close to covering the cost of housing state inmates, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

“We get stuck with the backlog,” said Kootenai County Sheriff Rocky Watson. “It’s something I never calculated when we were anticipating how quickly the jail is going to fill up.”

The jail is filling up so fast that Kootenai County is considering going to voters to ask for an extension of the half-cent sales tax to pay for another jail expansion. The last expansion, which cost $12 million, added 200 beds to the facility. The jail now has a capacity of 325 but has been regularly exceeding those numbers.

The population of state inmates changes every day, but recently it’s hovered around 49 or 50. Because many are awaiting court dates on multiple charges, only about a dozen could leave immediately for the state penitentiary.

“We’d like to see them out of here the next possible transport day,” said Capt. Ben Wolfinger. Sheriff’s officials point out that the state reimbursement rate – now set at $40 per day per inmate – does not cover the $62 per day average cost to house an inmate.

When they have too many inmates, sometimes they put mattresses on the floors, said Lt. Nile Shirley, jail administrator. “Oftentimes, we’ll send an inmate to an out-of-county jail.”

The state prisoners are the first to leave and usually go to Shoshone County, which welcomes state inmates and acts as a hub for state prisoners in the five northern counties. State inmates are a growth business for the small county, which couldn’t afford to keep its jail open without them.

The more state prisoners the 64-bed jail has, the less it costs the county to run the jail, said Lt. Rick Smith, Shoshone County jail administrator.

“I would prefer to have 30 state inmates,” Smith said last week on a day he only had 16 state inmates. “I’d prefer to have them here than have them go out of state. You’d think that would cost them a lot more.”

Some state inmates stay many months in the jail, which was converted from a car dealership in the 1970s and has views of mountainsides and, occasionally, elk or bears from its outdoor recreation area. The indoor workout room sports an elaborate mural of an ocean scene and another of a mine shaft that was painted by a former long-term state inmate. Long-term state inmates tend to be well-mannered, Smith said, and wind up on janitorial and kitchen work crews.

Smith doesn’t have control over how long state inmates stay. The state Department of Correction sends up a van or bus each week and takes what prisoners it can. Inmates with medical problems or those sentenced to a six-month rider program have priority, because they need to participate in court-ordered programs within six months.

“If someone is going to serve a two- to five-year sentence, they might need some programming, but they won’t need it for a while,” said Teresa Jones, Correction Department spokeswoman. The agency’s programming includes vocational education, mental health counseling and treatment for substance abuse.

Of all inmates, and probation and parolees, 85 percent admit to substance abuse problems, Jones said. Convictions from drug crimes have increased 50 percent in the last decade, she said. And 43 percent of women inmates – the fastest-growing segment of the inmate population – are incarcerated for drug crimes, compared with 23.5 percent of the men.

Property crimes remain the prime reason for incarceration, but “the driving force” behind those crimes is drugs, Jones said.

Still, substance abuse treatment has not expanded as intended in the state correctional system. Instead, the population has increased by more than 800 inmates in the past three years while the department lost 28 staff positions.

“We don’t do a very good job about addressing the core problem, and for most counties and the state, it’s meth (methamphetamine),” said Lynn, of the state sheriffs association.

Crider, who ran as a fringe candidate for governor in 1994, has a few ideas about how to shrink the prison population, after having spent six years in the state pen. Long-term drug treatment is at the top of his list, but he also touts mandatory parole, and wants the state to restore the practice of rewarding prisoners who behave with reduced sentences.

“If they had good time, I’d be out in 2010,” Crider said. “The way it works now, there’s no incentive for inmates to behave themselves.”

Idaho Rep. Steve Smylie, R-Boise, agrees and introduced legislation this session to allow inmates to “earn time” off of their sentences. Idaho used to have a similar law, but it was repealed in the mid-1980s during the movement to get tough on crime, Smylie said.

“One of the unintended consequences is you take one of the tools away from the Correction Department to manage prisoners,” he said.

His bill died in committee, however, because some lawmakers want to wait until Gov. Dirk Kempthorne appoints a Criminal Justice Commission to study solutions to prison overcrowding. The bill was estimated to save the state $4.2 million in 2007.

Still pending is another bill that would establish automatic parole for nonviolent offenders as soon as they’re eligible.

“If something doesn’t work,” Smylie said, referring to the current correctional system, “maybe we should do something different.”