TONIGHT, THURSDAY, NOV. 21 MEDFORD CITY COUNCIL MEETING. 6:00pm, Medford City Council Chambers 411 W. 8th Street, MedfordAgenda item: 70.1 COUNCIL BILL 2019-123 A resolution approving a Jackson County order to initiate formation of a Jackson County Law Enforcement Service District and consenting to the inclusion of City territory within the boundaries of the district.
Update of City Council meeting decisions:
Ashland City Council voted 5-1 Tuesday night to postpone a decision on whether to allow Ashland residents to vote on a proposal to create a Law Enforcement Service District and build a new jail that would be more than twice the size of the existing facility.
Council members said they want to know more about the county’s role in mental health services and directed staff to schedule a meeting with one of the Jackson County commissioners, one to three Ashland City Council members, and Sheriff Nate Sickler, as well as other involved parties to discuss the proposal before deciding. The proposed meeting would not be public, so a quorum of council members or commissioners would not be present, assistant city administrator Adam Hanks said. The next vote is expected to be held Tuesday, Dec. 3. https://ashlandtidings.com/news/top-stories/ashland-city-council-postponed-jail-service-district-decision
Talent City Council members narrowly voted against adopting the new jail proposal in a four to three vote against the proposal. It was a close vote, but the council members who voted against the jail proposal say there is still more research to be done and mental health services should be put at the top of the priority list.
The vote is not a total bust for the jail’s future. If the other ten Jackson County cities approve the plan, the proposal still heads to commissioners, who will decide whether or not it will go to voters next year. https://kobi5.com/news/local-news/talent-city-council-narrowly-rejects-jail-proposal-115892/
Give your input to:
Medford City Council Members http://www.medfordma.org/city-council-2/
Jackson County Commisioners
Phone: (541) 774-6116
FAX: (541) 774-6705
Business Hours: 8:00 am – 5:00 pm weekdays
Rick Dyer, Commissioner
Email: DyerRR@jacksoncounty.org
Bob Strosser, Commissioner
Email: StrossRJ@jacksoncounty.org
Colleen Roberts, Commissioner
Email: RobertCL@jacksoncounty.org
Ashland City Council Members council@ashland.or.us
Talent City Council Members talentcc@cityoftalent.org
Compiled by Rogue Action Center:
- According to the county, the new triple-sized jail would cost more than $1 billion to build, maintain, and operate over the next 23 years. Here is the county’s own language explaining a 20-year spreadsheet that was presented to city councils last March.
“Total cost of constructing the new jail is $60 million general fund reserves, $6.6 million for land, and $104.3 million bonded construction cost (which will be paid by the district) for a total $170.9 million. Total district support (new taxes) for operations and bond payments would be the sum of row 45 from column C to V for the first 20 years or $514,042,038. Total projected continued general fund support for the jail operations would be the sum of row 36 columns C to V for the first 20 years or $241,798,994. Total operations expenditures for the 20 years is the sum of row 32 columns C to V or $713,861,937.
Total budget would be the combination of row 32 “Total Expenditures” plus row 41 or bond payments which equals $852,136,517.”
With costs running more than $50 million per year at that point, total costs would exceed $1 billion by year 23.
- The county is unable or unwilling to provide basic data or analysis to justify a tripling of jail capacity. City council members, community groups, and other residents have asked, unsuccessfully, for basic data and analyses about the people the county is currently arresting and what happens to them afterward in order to know whether a tripling of jail capacity will address the actual problems.
- The county didn’t study, analyze, or present any cost-effective alternatives, proven in other counties, to reduce the number of people jailed in the first place, reduce repeat offenses, save money, and provide better prevention, diversion, crisis assistance, and treatment.
Community groups like the Rogue Action Center and the National Alliance on Mental Illness Southern Oregon (NAMI-SO) have organized several public presentations about proven alternatives.
CAHOOTS is a mobile crisis intervention service integrated into the public safety systems of Eugene,Springfield, and Lane County. A 24/7 free response is available for non-emergency medical care or first aid, and for a broad range of non-criminal crises, including homelessness, intoxication, disorientation, substance abuse, and mental illness problems, as well as dispute resolution and conflict mediation. Transportation to services is also provided.
This program handles 24,000 calls per year. It saves the community $15.5 million a year by handling calls that would otherwise go to the police, reducing arrests, and diverting patients from emergency rooms.
Marion County has implemented a similar mobile crisis team that partners mental health professionals and law enforcement. The Crisis Outreach Response Team, a collaboration with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office and the Health Department, connects individuals with counseling services, alcohol and drug treatment, and peer mentor support as an alternative to jail time. Less than 3% of calls the crisis teams respond to result in arrests. Marion County has reduced annual jail bookings by 20 to 25 percent.
Marion County staff use a risk assessment tool to to divert low-level, low-risk pre-trial offenders out of jail by waiving bail. The county provides supervision and reminder services to ensure offenders make it to trial. Records show that most of these defendants don’t reoffend during release and do show up for their court dates.
A few of the many options used elsewhere that Jackson County could study before putting a billion dollars into a new triple-sized jail might include:
- 24 hour crisis center
- Crisis housing with wrap-around services
- More transitional housing
- Tools to identify mental illness earlier
- 24/7 mobile crisis response
- Increase resources for mental health and drug courts
- Expanding pre-trial release and supervision programs
- Eliminate cash bail for low-level offenders and increase support services to ensure offenders turn out to court
- This huge expenditure will make it far less likely that the county would ever fund those alternatives. It also creates enormous political pressure to justify this spending by making sure the 500 to 600 extra beds are filled each night. No elected official is going to want to bring in alternative programs that result in the new jail tax having been unnecessary. While some of the added 500 to 600 beds per night will be filled by holding people in jail longer, more arrests will also be needed to justify the expansion. That will likely result in profiling of people with mental illness or addiction, homeless people, young people, LGBTQ people, and people of color.
- Evidence shows that holding people in jail longer leads to more repeat crimes, not fewer. Jackson County says if it could hold people in jail a few days longer, it could connect them with services — while other counties are connecting more people to services without jailing them in the first place. A study by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation found that the longer a defendant is kept in jail, the higher their risk of repeat offenses. Marion County found that the two-year rate for low-risk defendants reoffending hovers at around 17 percent when they are kept in jail for two to three days, but spikes to 51 percent once jail stays increase to two weeks.
- The county’s plan does not address underlying problems like mental illness, addiction, homelessness, and poverty. As one example, Jackson County lacks at least 12,500 housing units for people in addiction rehab, suffering from mental illness, living with disabilities, at risk of domestic violence, stabilizing their lives as released offenders, or with other special needs, according to the most recent analysis by the Oregon Housing and Community Services Department. The county has presented no analysis of the potential impact of investing more resources into addressing needs like that.
- Being jailed creates new trauma and new barriers to getting jobs, rental housing, and needed benefits. One of the many reasons that other counties focus on diverting people to other remedies besides jail is that jail actually sets many people back and makes their problems worse. Jackson County has suggested that it would hire a couple more health professionals to work in the triple-sized jail. Expanded services are a good idea, but expanding the number of people who are jailed to get those services is not.
The damage that excessive incarceration does is one reason that states with expanding populations like Texas and Georgia under conservative Republican governments have enacted new policies to reduce the number of people in custody. Two years ago the Oregon Legislature changed criminal justice policies in order to avoid building a new prison. And the state is working with local governments to promote more effective policies than simply building bigger jails. Last year, Congress passed a new law to reduce the number of people who are incarcerated.
- The county is asking each city council to endorse the plan and to lock in that city’s residents to paying for this plan, no matter how that city’s residents vote.
The county wants to put the new jail tax on the ballot in May, 2020, where it would need a majority of county voters to vote “Yes.” The resolution the county wrote for city councils to pass commits the residents of that particular city to being part of the new county service district that would be created and to paying the tax, even if a majority of residents of that city vote “No.”
- The county decided that the new tax would be collected and spent by a new service district run by the three county commissioners and the county administrator, unlike other service districts with elected boards that are more directly accountable to the public. The county has chosen to set it up in a different way than the library district, sewer district, transit district (RVTD), fire districts, and other districts that are run by elected nonpartisan boards. So residents would be taxed but would have far less direct say than they do with other districts like this. Any “advisory committees” that might be promised would have no power or authority.
- The county chose to tax residents in a way that prohibits use of the money for anything but the new triple-sized jail. The county could have proposed a levy that could also be used for prevention, crisis assistance, diversion, and treatment in order to reduce the number of people who are jailed and to reduce repeat offenses, as other counties have done. But it chose to try to establish a service district which, by law, could not use funds for those purposes.
Counties all over the U.S. are grappling with these questions. A good resource on what to ask county officials is a toolkit from the Prison Policy Initiative:
‘Does our county really need a bigger jail? A guide for avoiding unnecessary jail expansion’
