Published: October 30, 2009 09:48 am      

RONNIE ELLIS: Policymakers, not administrators, created jails problems

FRANKFORT — Lawmakers on the Interim Joint Committee on Local Government hammered Corrections Commissioner LaDonna Thompson with questions. Why hadn’t the Department of Corrections implemented more of the recommendations for county jails in a review by state Auditor of Public Accounts Crit Luallen?

Thompson had to be a bit surprised. The key recommendation of the now four-year-old jails study is that the state assume control of the jails. Thompson can’t effect that change. It would require the legislature to do so. And the audit was of jails, not the state system operated by Thompson.

One lawmaker praised Kentucky’s jail system as a model. He apparently hasn’t thoroughly read Luallen’s report or visited some of the lockups where inmates sleep on the floor in cells so crowded they barely have room to turn around. Studies by University of Kentucky Law Professor Dr. Robert Lawson – and a series of stories by CNHI News Service two years ago - detailed some of the substandard conditions in county jails.

Those stories also documented the pressures jail expenses place on county budgets. They reviewed Lawson’s studies of the exponential rise in inmate populations – and costs – although the crime rate remained stable while lawmakers passed bills to criminalize more behavior and to lengthen sentences.

Sen. Julian Carroll, D-Frankfort, suggested still more state prisoners be housed in jails because – at least on paper – jails can do it more cheaply. On average, it costs about $19,000 a year to house an inmate in a state facility and only $11,000 in county jails. But part of the difference is the nature of those incarcerated in the two systems. County jails don’t have maximum security prisoners, those suffering catastrophic illness or severe psychiatric problems. They are frequently understaffed with poorly trained and under paid staff. Nor do jails offer programs which might lessen chances inmates will commit more crimes upon release.

The financial data don’t account for the different living conditions, either. Maybe criminals shouldn’t expect to live in comfort, but there is a minimal standard which reflects as much on society as it does on inmates’ criminal responsibility. And lawmakers refuse to address their role in the problem. Behavior which 30 years ago produced calls to parents or small fines can now put minor drug offenders in jail for years because of harsher and harsher penalties passed by the lawmakers who campaign on promises to “get tough on crime.”

Vince Lang, executive director of the County Judge/Executives Association, which supports state takeover of jails and has pursued more state funding for jails through litigation, and Michael Foster, Christian County attorney and president of the Kentucky Association of Counties, cut to the bottom line.

“They’re broke so they’re looking to the jails to solve the problem and the jails and counties are going broke too,” Lang said. “One way to (solve the counties’ jail problem) is for the state to take over the system but you don’t have the money to do it,” Foster told the lawmakers.

They don’t. They also don’t have the resolve or the intellectual honest to tell the public we can’t keep sending more and more people to jail for minor drug offenses without foregoing other funding needs like education and infrastructure improvements. They won’t consider recommendations to re-visit persistent felony laws which produce lengthy prison terms disproportionate to the crime.

But lawmakers at least ought to lighten up on the people whose job is to administer the system lawmakers created.

RONNIE ELLIS writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cnhifrankfort.