Podcast: How Counties Manage Overcrowded Jails

Logan Finney, Idaho Reports:

When we talk about Twin Falls County, we’re not just talking about the city of Twin Falls. Can you remind me just how much of a geographic area you guys cover?

Capt. Doug Hughes, Twin Falls Sheriff’s Office:

It’s like 2,000 square miles in southern Idaho, engulfing some smaller cities. Twin Falls is the largest city in our county. We also have Buhl and Kimberly, Filer and the Hansen area, all in that, as well as some real small communities in the southern part along the Nevada border.

IR:

How long have you been with the sheriff’s department, and how long specifically have you been helping to administer the jail?

Hughes:

I’ve been the jail administrator since 2006, and I have been working with the sheriff’s office for 33 years.

IR:

In that time as jail administrator, Twin Falls County attempted to run a bond election in 2019 to fund an expansion of the jail, and that was turned down by voters. Can you walk me back to that 2019 period and what sort of capacity issues or other issues you all were seeing in the jail?

Hughes:

Back in 2019, we had about 224 beds and we were running roughly a population of about 260 to 290 prisoners. Obviously, we needed to expand our facility. So, we went out to look to get a bond and that failed. It didn’t fail by much. It was a pretty close vote, but it failed. And you know, that causes some anxiety as far as trying to get the bed space necessary. Luckily, during that time, we were able to obtain beds from another agency, 25 contracted beds, to help relieve some of that that overcrowding that we have. Obviously, 25 beds is not going to do it. But at that time, those were the beds that were available to contract with.

IR:

When you’re talking about contract beds, that means taking people who would be booked at the Twin Falls County jail and moving them to another facility, because you simply don’t have room?

Hughes:

Yes. Yes.

IR:

Where were the contract beds for your county, and what sort of financial impact does that have on the jail?

Hughes:

Well, it is the financial impact really on the county. Obviously, that 25 beds is going to be close to $600,000 or better a year to maintain those 25 beds over there in Jerome.

IR:

So after that bond initially failed in 2019, what was sort of the immediate reaction from within the sheriff’s department? You know, of course, it’s never guaranteed that these measures will pass, but what sort of feedback were you getting from the community? Was there an appetite for this? Was there just not enough people who had enough information? Why do you think that bond vote got close but didn’t make it over the finish line?

Hughes:

You know, it was we had a lot of community support throughout that. We did a lot of town hall meetings in different locations and explained the circumstances of Twin Falls County jail. Over the past, I don’t know, probably couple of decades we’ve had crowding issues, and they’d go away just depending on the year it was. But during that timeframe, there was just so many that we were housing, and the difference of our population, it was not going to go away.

We had already done all of the specialty courts and taken advantage of prerelease programs and things like that. Plus, our partners in the community – the other law enforcement officers – were cite and releasing people they would have probably normally taken to jail, but they weren’t, simply because there was no bed space.

And we’re kind of still operating under that to this day, simply because the crowding situation hasn’t changed a whole lot since then. Our capacity later changed in 2020 when we had an addition, but that capacity basically got rid of some old annexes and gave us a few more beds. But we’ve outgrown that as well at this point.

IR:

Can you talk to me a little bit more about that expansion in 2020? Because this was after the bond had failed, but the sheriff’s department was able to get some money from some of the coronavirus relief, some CARES Act funding specifically. What facilities did that actually help to build at the Twin Falls County Jail?

Hughes:

It expanded our cellblock area and moved us from 224 beds up to 254 beds. But mainly, the way we were able to obtain that was because of COVID, and being able to isolate or move people in the facility to better treat or better be able to identify and then segregate people that were exposed to COVID, and of course the ones that had COVID, we were able to move throughout the facility with that expansion.

IR:

And now today, with COVID not so much of an immediate issue that we’re dealing with from an administrative side, has the additional capacity from that project helped? Or is it kind of a wash, with the smaller annexes you had to take down? Tell me how that’s panned out for you.

Hughes:

Well, obviously it’s helped, because it gave us an extra 30 beds that we didn’t have before, you know. But the realization is it’s 254 beds and right now we’re sitting at 287 people, with 25 housed over in Jerome.

IR:

What sort of issues does that cause for you as an administrator? Having so many people, and people in other counties, does that make your job more complicated?

Hughes:

Well, it definitely does. We’re having to move inmates for court and other things from those out-of-county beds. But as far as housing people in, I mean, obviously jails are a kind of a tight place anyway. And everybody has their own personal space, and in jail that that space is limited. And when you’re crowded, that space even becomes more compacted, which could lead to other problems in trying to maintain control and safety and all the aspects of running a facility.

IR:

You mentioned a little bit ago that, in part because of these capacity issues, your officers and your deputies are using some of these diversion programs and specialty courts. Some of those programs people might not be familiar with if they’ve never interacted with them. Can you can you tell me some of these examples of programs that can help people get through the justice system without necessarily having to book them and keep them in jail for a period of time?

Hughes:

With the prerelease system, basically those systems are people that are nonviolent, usually misdemeanor-type people that have been arrested. We work through magistrate probation with them and the courts to get them put on a prerelease program, which comes with some responsibility, you’ve got to do some programing and other things depending on the charges that you have.

It’s all part of a coordinated release, but it gets them out of jail sooner, as long as they can maintain and not commit any more crimes and things of that nature, to be out till they get sentenced, of course. And if they complete the prerelease program, usually they get sentenced to no jail time and it’s usually a fine or something along that line.

But we also have the specialty courts, which is drug court and DUI court and family drug court. Those things help a person that’s in and that’s never been in custody before be put through a quicker process in dealing with their charges, and hopefully getting to treatment and avenues like that instead of being locked up in jail.

But, for the biggest part, those courts are pretty well overwhelmed now. And the prerelease worked well in the beginning, but a lot of those people were finding themselves re-offending and coming back to jail and then not being on prerelease status any longer. So, I mean, it’s kind of a revolving door, but it does, those programs do keep to our numbers, you know, relatively in the same area for the last few years. We’ve been able to keep our numbers pretty steady, instead of what they’d be growing if we weren’t doing the things we were doing.

IR:

Sure, definitely. That’s also something that we’ve heard in Ada County, which had their jail bond on the ballot just on Tuesday of this week, which also very narrowly did not make it across the finish line. People at Ada County are also saying that they’re using these programs, they’re sentencing people and moving people through the system in a way that minimizes the amount of jail time, but they’re still dealing with overcrowding. Over there in Twin Falls, if you guys are also overcrowded after you were able to do this little expansion, what’s on the horizon? What sort of plans are in the works right now to keep addressing that capacity issue?

Hughes:

Well, the county commissioners and the sheriff’s office are looking at expanding. Obviously we are having to find other funds. Funds that we’re going to have to culminate ourselves, because right now I don’t think with the economy the way it is, the voters are not going to vote to do jail expansion here in Twin Falls County.

So, obviously we have to look at funding sources and maybe start putting things together where we can put another bunch of beds. Obviously, being downtown, we’re kind of landlocked, so we’ve got to look at other sites to put a facility there. And we may have to do it in in stages. But obviously we’re looking at what we need right now to get these people housed properly, and for a few years at least expand big enough to keep us from having overcrowding issues here in Twin Falls County.

I mean, we’ve talked about 150 beds at another location, and I think we can probably get that working in that direction. It sounds real positive. It’s just making sure that we can do it within the money that we’ve that we’ve accumulated for this project.

IR:

All right. Is there anything else specifically about jail capacity or about the state’s relationship to the county jails that you think our listeners should be aware of?

Hughes:

Well, obviously, over the last few years, the state’s been running at pretty much capacity as well. When they get start getting backed up, county jails get backed up, and some county jails are okay with them being backed up. But in a situation where you’ve already got over overcrowding, and the state’s not moving their prisoners once they’re sentenced, it becomes real problematic.

One, the prisoners want to get to where they’re going and start doing the programing stuff that they need to do. And two, we just don’t have the bedspace for them. But when the state takes up all the other jail beds, I don’t have anywhere to move anybody either. So, it’s kind of a push and pull from a state standpoint. But I mean, the counties have looked at different aspects. I mean, a sales tax to help build these facilities, things like that, that just haven’t really come together. So, it’s kind of left on the counties to burden through with the burden of building these facilities, especially with all the new growth and people coming in from the outside and moving to Idaho and to these other communities. And we just haven’t been able to put together a facility that really accommodates for that, as much growth that is going on for the time period.

IR:

What’s your relationship like with the other counties and the other county jail administrators? We mentioned you guys have some contract beds over in Jerome County. Are most of the counties also overburdened, or is there a bit of play where some counties could take prisoners from counties that necessarily aren’t as busy? What’s the dynamic like there?

Hughes:

You know, it’s a great dynamic. Like I said, the other jail administrators are great people and they’re running their facilities, and occasionally there is beds available and they will take them to help us out. But, they have to keep so many beds available for people that are getting incarcerated in their own counties that sometimes those beds are limited.

And I can’t blame them if they have a few open beds, they want to keep them open for people that are coming into custody. And you know, and you’ve got to think about classification and the type of prisoners that you’re going to take, and different things like that. But the jail administrators are a pretty tight knit group, and they’ll help out when they can.

I think that a lot of jail administrators would like to help out a lot more, and they unfortunately don’t have the bed space to offer up either, because most of these jails are running at operational levels. So, they don’t want to start crowding in other counties’ inmates and having you have to come get them because they ran out of space.

IR:

All right, Captain Doug Hughes with the Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Office and jail administrator for Twin Falls County. Thanks so much for joining us this week.

Hughes:

You bet. Thank you.