With reduced jail populations, do we need a new jail?

Thursday the Health and Human Needs Committee voted in favor of halting the jail, jail populations are down at least 40%, Madison police are arresting less people, we have new leadership on the Criminal Justice Council, can we actually bring our ourselves to create real change in the criminal “justice” system?  Will any of this make real, meaningful change?There is so much going on, I know I can’t keep up, given I’m on three Public Safety Review Committees doing our own work. But here’s a bit of catching up and information and data.

HEALTH AND HUMAN NEEDS COMMITTEE VOTES AGAINST THE JAIL

On Thursday the Health and Human Needs Committee was the first to vote on this proposal:

Crazily, the fiscal note says that there would be no fiscal impact?  Yeah, right.  (I can’t explain.)

You can watch the meeting here.

Discussion starts 2 hours and 8 minutes into the meeting. Richard Kilmer made the motion to adopt, Heidi Wegleitner seconds.  Liz Doyle introduces the item (also sponsored by Supervisors Elana Haasl, Yogesh Chawla, Richard Kilmer and Heidi Wegleitner) by saying that the resolution was introduced to highlight the good work that has been done to reduce the jail population due to COVID-19.  The sheriff’s office, judges, municipal law enforcement and so many people have been working hard to reduce the jail population.  This halts the construction of the jail, looks at alternatives for improvements on the 6th and 7th floors, alternatives for people experiencing mental health crises becasue the current jail plans wouldn’t address those issues for another 5 years.  It also has recommendations to address sentencing and shifting services from public safety to Health and Human Needs.

There are 31 people registered, 2 in opposition, 29 in support.  5 wish to speak.  Speakers start around 2:10.  Discussion starts 2:32.

Supervisor Blaire Adkins asks Chair Liz Doyle what she sees as the difference is between this proposal and the one introduced by County Board Chair Analiese Eicher and Sheila Stubbs.

Doyle says that they consulted with Eicher and Stubbs and the main difference is their proposal doesn’t address the jail.  There is three additional speakers that they hear from and then discussion resumes at 2:49.

Wegleitner says (this is a summary, not verbatim) the resolution tells some real truths about serious racial injustices that continue to persist and provides a change in direction for the county board to change direction to support the demands of the movement to support black lives, investigate opportunities to improve our criminal justice system, address disparities in incarceration and provide for community involvement in key decision making for people who are black and impacted by the incarceration system.  She says this is not the end all and be all of the work, but we have to move away from the current jail plan, the plan should be stopped and we should move towards solutions that are humane, effective and responsive and accountable to the black community, indigenous community and people of color who have been disproportionately targeted by the criminal legal system and the history of incarceration in Dane County.  She has been speaking against the jail for several years and she thinks this year we know a couple things we didn’t know last year.  One of the key things is that we really can expect more from our criminal justice leaders and system partners to reduce the jail population, because it happened during the pandemic.  It happened because we needed to save lives of those in the jail, those who work in the jail and their family members.  We can reduce it, when there is a will to reduce it but we have to work at it and get after jail disparities too.  We won’t do that by just not investing in the jail, we really need to turn to investing in the community and human services.  The investments we made in mental health over the last year and the call center are important developments and we need  a lot more investment in upstream solutions that are humane and not law enforcement responses.  She is excited in the 14 points that Eicher and Stubbs presented, but a key piece is missing, we need to stop the $150M Dane County Jail project if we are serious about re-imagining our criminal justice system.  If we build an 8 story, 922 bed tower and don’t take a hard look at how we can change, we will fill up that building and continue to have disparities and spend a bunch of money to cement our legacy of incarceration and white supremacy instead of rehabilitation, restoration and repairing the harm that has been caused by decades and centuries of systemic racism.

Adkins says she was not on the Dane County Board when the jail was passed last year.  She says her understanding is that the plan is smaller than the current jail.  Doyle says that the sheriff did reduce the beds when they consolidated.  Adkins says that her concern as a health care provider is that the current jail could be condemned at any point in time, it’s so unsafe, if we choose to do nothing and the jail gets condemned, where will our inmates go and then we will have no control over anything anymore.  What would happen if our jail was condemned.

Doyle says that she doesn’t believe the staff can answer that.  She says even if the current plan moves along smoothly, and it won’t because its already been pulled from the Urban Design Commission approval process, but even if it were, none of the conditions you are speaking about would be addressed, this resolution calls to address those conditions in a more timely fashion.

A complete aside – This is what has been done so far to address the conditions according to Jerry Mandli from Dane County Public Works:

Original Joe Daniels’ Contract: ~$2.41M

COs to Contract: ~$248K (10.3%) – (CO = “change orders” or additions to the contract)

Current Contract: ~$2.66M

Paid so far: ~$2.59M

Tasks completed:

• • • Lead paint remediation & repainting
    • Asbestos remediation & reinsulating
    • Emergency egress luminous path marking
    • Multi-cell lock / door operator assembly & associated electronic controls replacement (50 locations)
    • Lock / door operator assembly & associated electronic controls replacement (114 cells)
    • Lock cylinder replacement (non-cell doors) (~300 locations)
    • Food pass lock assembly replacement (19 cells)
    • Bed frame updates (4 locations)
    • Security window replacement (9 windows)
    • Security door replacement (6 doors)
    • Laundry room security measures
    • Duct cleaning
    • Exhaust louver, fan & damper additions (4 locations each)
    • Smoke detector additions (~16 locations)
    • Fire alarm control panel addition

Tasks remaining:

• • • Stair tower pressurization / smoke control

Haasl says at their last meeting they passed a resolution declaring racism a public health crisis and she would find that effort to be completely fraudulent if we didn’t address one of the most oppressive systems against black, indigenous and people of color.  If we are serious about talking about and acting on how racism impacts black people, disproportionately, we owe it to people to look at solutions instead of dumping millions of dollars into the incarceral system that is not sustainable if we are committed to serious criminal justice reform.   She says that, she echos what Tyson said, there is a lot a of performative actions happening and we have an opportunity to change that and we can be the board that does not cement the legacy that that is deeply rooted in systemic racism.  This is an opportunity to make history and history has its eyes on us right now.  If we’re acting in the best interest of people and using our privilege and power, we should be using it to push forward, reform is not going to be easy but its our job to listen to the community and they are saying they do not want a new jail and we should be investing in the community and other services.

Supervisor Mike Bare (still not verbatim) says this is difficult but necessary work.  Comprehensively reforming the criminal justice system is daunting and we don’t necessarily have the power to do it all, but we should try and encourage other levels of government to do the same. It requires tackling centuries of structural racism and institutional and purposeful protection of white supremacy and we should and can make choices based on a set of shared values in pursuit of equitable outcomes in our criminal justice system.  Ensuring public safety is a function of government and we have to do that in a way that doesn’t oppress people, doesn’t discriminate, doesn’t create trauma, doesn’t create fear.  And we should do everything in this resolution and more.  We can’t do it alone, we need to have help from leaders at every level.  People holding power to give something up and allow equity to be the focus of our criminal justice system.  I understand there are other efforts underway, he looks forward to reviewing those as well.  He has 4 amendments that will strengthen this draft but will hold until others comment.

Richard Kilmer supports and wants to be a co-sponsor.  One of the first people who spoke, a social worker who works in an alternatives to incarceration program, said she has no people of color in her program, and she should have 50% looking at the population of the jail.  Things are not working, otherwise we would not have this disparity.  As someone who had a very close family member in the Dane County Jail, that is one of the reasons I got on the county board, they should have had treatment for a mental health crisis, but they were in solitary confinement.  That was not where they needed to be.  That was one of the reasons that brought him on the board and he is grateful for this being before them.

Doyle says the agenda doesn’t reflect all the sponsors and he has been added.

Patrick Downing says this is a valuable discussion, one that started many years ago, many of the issues in the resolution are on the table, and many of them are not within our authority.  He says at noon he listened to the Criminal Justice Council meeting and they are taking all these suggestions and gave progress reports on them.  He says he’d like to correct the perception out there for some people that you can take $150M for capital funds and turn it in to human services funding.  Capital money is long term spending, human services money goes on your tax bill next year.  The 6th and 7th floor are draconian, it takes his breath away.  The Chief Justice of the courts has weighed in that when the courts reopen, while we were fortunate to have a reduced population, when the courts are back the population will go back up and he’s concerned we may not have capacity because of the backlog.  If that happens, those cells will continue to be used and if we stop the project right now it will add a year or two of the Alcatraz cells being open.  We have to continue with the jail project and these efforts for justice for everyone.

Doyle appreciates Downing speaking to the budget and capital and operating funds.  She hasn’t heard anyone speak to the issue of debt service and how that will impact the budget in the future.  Capital projects do have a direct impact on future operating budgets.

Amendment 1

Bare moves an amendment to #1 to not only include people of color, but people from all across the community in mental health, substance abuse treatment, community services.  His amendment would read:

The Criminal Justice Council shall be renamed the Community Justice Council and shall include community representatives, including representatives of communities of color.

Wegleitner seconds for discussion.

Bare says that in Milwaukee he works with the Community Justice Council and its been effective and he thinks they should replicate that.

Wegleitner loves the name change.  The Council make up is in the county ordinance and we would need an ordinance amendment but that could be the next step.  Or we could “recommend” that it be changed.  Doyle says it could be a recommendation and addressed in subsequent action.

Bare says that removing the word shall would achieve that.  It would be a recommendation and not a change to ordinance.

Amendment passes, no objections so its unanimous.

Amendment 2

Bare asks Doyle to explain how they would achieve #4.   He says he has some language about who would develop it, would it be sentencing guidelines.

4. Develop sentences that limit incarceration and instead focus on restorative justice that help victims and the community;

Doyle says for the county board to support restorative justice courts so there is more capacity for the judges.  We have to support each others work.  The judges, the CJC would work on it and county board needs to support that with budget authority.

Wegleitner says she appreciates using restorative courts before charging, but another recommendation that has been before the CJC but she is not sure has gone anywhere, would be to reduce the standard 6 month sentence to 4 months, that would have a big impact on people.  There are so many little pieces like that which could have an impact on the jail population and disparities.  She says that is another example of a recommendation that has not been implemented but has been recommended by the State Public Defender representative to the Criminal Justice Council and has been reinforced by our national partners as a way to reduce the jail population.

Bare makes an amendment to change number 4 to:

The Criminal Justice Council develop sentencing guidelines to limit incarceration and instead focus on restorative justice that helps victims and the community.

He says that may need more word-smithing to reflect their intent.

No discussion, passes unanimously.

Amendment 3

Bare now wishes to amend #8.  He says it is unclear what ability they have to tell local law enforcement what to do.  His first thought was to strike this one.  He says perhaps they should just have some language to clear this up.

8. Prioritize the writing of tickets instead of jail for minor offenses by local law enforcement;

He makes the following amendment

The Criminal Justice Council encourage prioritizing the writing of tickets instead of jail for minor offenses by local law enforcement

Wegleitner seconds.

Doyle says that the intent was for the county board to use its budget authority to encourage these actions.  By changing this language by moving it to the Criminal Justice Council it makes it harder to have the county board act.

Weglietner says she thinks the goal is to make it clear who we are asking to take the next step.  She says they are encouraging local law enforcement agencies, they are the ones that have the discretion and have exercised that in the COVID times.  She says instead of Criminal Justice Council is should say

Discourage Local Law Enforcement Agencies from arresting and bringing people to jail for minor offenses and encourage issuing warnings and citations.

Hassl seconds.  Bare asks for it to be added to the chat box.  Doyle notes “what did we do before chat boxes”.  The re-write the amendment while typing it.  Pause while Wegleitner retypes.  They don’t read it for members of the public.  Doyle checks if Hassl still seconds. There were typos, so now Wegleitner reads the amendment and I’ve typed it above.

No further discussion, amendment to amendment passes unanimously.  The amendment then passes unanimously as well after discussion of the correct procedure to use.

Amendment 4

Bare asks to amend #9 and asks Doyle who would create the inventory:

9. Create inventory of local law enforcement use of force policies throughout the County;

Doyle says that in conversations with the sheriff his office has been working with local law enforcement to help them divert people from ending up in the jail.  It could be within their purview to coordinate, it could be within the Criminal Justice Council.  This was meant to be  a first step with further action, but she would be open to suggestions.

Bare says the if the intent is to have action later, then he suggests changing it to publish instead of create.  So people can access and see it.

9. Publish inventory of local law enforcement use of force policies throughout the County;

Wegleitner seconds.  No discussion, passes unanimously.

Final discussion

Wegleitner says that there has been some discussion in #11 in the use of electronic monitoring and her understanding is that this item is to talk about the folks who have been sentenced and have Huber Wok-release as their sentence and the sheriff can do electronic monitoring.  She says that electronic monitoring is not a great solution and there are problems with it, but she wants to emphasize that especially right now, but any time we can reduce harm we should look at how we can reduce harm.  This might not be a perfect solution but if people have a choice of sitting in jail or being intheir own space, many people would choose that option and there is potential to utilize that.  Some of these things are strategies to reduce the harm of incarceration, understanding that there are state and federal structural changes that impact these things and sometimes we have to work within the constraints of those other laws as well.  This is to deal with people where the alternative to having people sit in jail, it could get more people out.  This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look at the disparities in that program and look at ways for it to be less problematic, but get more people out of the county jail by examining the eligibility policies of the sheriff.

Attempted Amendment

Downing says he values many of these further resolved clauses, however, the mail thrust of this resolution will guarantee that people live in the draconian cells up on the 6th and 7th floor for 2 years beyond what’s even possible now.  He moves removal of lines 26 and 27.

No one seconds.

Final Vote

Aye:  Hassl, Kilmer, Wegleitner, Bare, Doyle

No:  Downing, Adkins

NUMBERS:  WHO’S IN THE JAIL?

The daily jail report is here.  I’m really bummed I didn’t save the report for the day that Nino Rodriguez made the comments on my Facebook page, but he urges us to use caution in looking at these numbers based on the review he did on July 24th:

There were not 495 people actually in the jail. 24 of the people listed on the report were out of jail doing home detention. I also checked the jail roster this morning by hand, and there were 23 other people who were not in the jail, either “OTCO” status, which means they are in a different county’s jail, or “STAY” which is usually a treatment facility or hospital. So the real number of people in the jail this morning was actually 448.

and

Note that this also doesn’t match the count on the jail website. When I looked this morning, there were 516 people listed. In addition to the 47 people noted in my previous comment who weren’t in the jail, the 516 includes 23 people who are AWOL.

As I said, the link changes every day, but here are the numbers for today that may be of interest.  I added the percentages.

Gender

• Male – 473 (92.5%)
• Female – 38 (7.5%)
• Total – 511

Race

Ethnicity

• Hispanic (5%)
• Non-Hispanic (95%)

Inmate Judicial Status

Age

• 16 – 1
• 17 – 3

Jail Diversion

• CAMP – 24

MADISON POLICE DEPARTMENT NUMBERS

I did an open records request – because Captain Mindy Winters told me that is what I needed to do at the PSRC meeting.  I wanted to know how the numbers of people they take to jail have changed this year.  This is what they provided to me, after she told me that they didn’t have the information.

June 30th

This letter and the attached is reply to your June 15th request for: The number of people transported to jail by MPD by month (March, April, May and June) for each of the three years. The reason for being transported to jail (PO hold, arrest, mental health, etc)

I am able to pull arrest status from all of our data which is attached to the email. This is a slight variation from what you originally asked for but it was discussed with you and my understanding is that the request was modified. This is a full release of this portion of your request. The column with “unknown/no status” in it means just what it says, we do not know based on the data. If we looked at the corresponding reports, the status would likely be obvious. However, that was not part of your request.

Your June 15th request also included: Also please provide the number of calls that were not responded to due to the calls for service changes outlined in the Employee Resource Guide pages 17 – 21.

With our communication, I believe I understand what you are looking for: called back versus driving a squad to respond. I cannot find out whether we responded via phone or in person without looking into every case report. I have verified that with our data team. Therefore I have no responsive records for that portion of your request. If you would like to request every case report during the COVID crisis, you can file that request and we can discuss whether that is a reasonable request at that point.

After a thorough search, I have determined no record exists in the Madison Police Department related to your request.“[T]he public records law does not require an authority to provide requested information if no record exists, or to simply answer questions about a topic of interest to the requester. “Journal Times, 2015 WI 56, ¶55 (citation omitted); see also State ex rel. Zinngrabe v. Sch. Dist. of Sevastopol, 146 Wis. 2d 629, 431 N.W.2d 734 (Ct. App. 1988). However, if no responsive record exists, the records custodian should inform the requester. Cf. State ex rel. Zinngrabe, 146 Wis. 2d 629.

Sincerely,

Julie A Laundrie – Madison Police Deparmtent Records Custodian

Year	2018				2019				2020
Month	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Mar	Apr	May	Jun*
Unknown/No status	8	5	4	10	4	6	11	4	7	7	92	76
In Custody – Juvenile Rece	13	11	36	29	34	29	30	39	31	25	16	7
In Custody – Public Safety	375	355	409	401	402	416	470	470	353	267	358	121
Pending Charges	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	2	0	0	0	0
Released to Guardian	2	4	6	0	0	0	1	4	3	0	0	2
Released to Responsible P	6	1	5	3	5	3	3	5	8	4	3	2
Released with Citation	291	329	302	300	270	260	289	303	215	236	228	72
Transferred to Hospital	4	7	4	4	1	6	4	4	9	3	2	1
Transferred to Other Agen	38	17	24	32	11	20	33	22	18	17	11	0
Transported to Detox	6	2	3	4	3	8	4	2	3	0	2	2

*The June numbers are only through June 17th.

NEW CRIMINAL JUSTICE COUNCIL LEADERSHIP AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM PROPOSALS

These were discussed at the last Criminal Justice Council where they voted County Board Chair Analiese Eicher in as chair.  You can watch the meeting here:

Discussion of the Criminal Justice Reform Package starts at 47 minutes and lasts about 45 minutes.  Here’s the memo from July 3rd that expands on the package: