SAN ANTONIO — Scrap any vision of inmates pouring of the Bexar County Detention Center if county commissioners give the nod to a new jail diversion program.
“Every inmate I can take out---reduces the pressure on both staffing and the facility,” David Smith said. “As well as the risk of potential COVID spread in that facility.”
Smith, Bexar County Manager, is recommending jail diversion programs to the tune of nearly $3.4 million. Part of it includes expanding the GPS system for certain offenders.
The lion’s share of the funding would, if approved by commissioners, move eligible non-violent or low-level crime offenders out of the jail to treatment facilities like Crosspoint Inc. The nonprofit corporation would provide residential beds and space for treatment.
“So, essentially you’re living in this facility 24/7---supervised. It’s not jail though…it’s a more normal setting” Smith said.
According to Smith, more than 600 inmates---which is their annualized projection---could be eligible. If they moved from the detention center to a facility like Crosspoint, it would rest entirely in the hands of a criminal court judge. If given the green light, he said, there is no mass release on the first day of the fiscal year.
“600 people are not walking out of jail October 1,” he said.
$1.1 million would provide housing and support services for 41 beds with an average stay of 60 days. By the county’s math, that’s 246 offenders each year at a cost of $74 a day.
“I think it’s a necessary move and I think it has many positive benefits that may very well outlast the motivation that we have at the moment to reduce our jail population,” Geary Reamey said.
Reamey is a professor at St. Mary’s Law School and criminal justice expert. He said the coronavirus is forcing many administrators to rethink the 19th-century methods most jails operate by.
“It would also allow the jail to provide a more secure and, in some ways—perhaps, more rehabilitative environment that it can with the crowding than it can with the crowding that we’ve traditionally seen in our jails.”
The motivating factors are jail space for COVID-19 reasons and, of course, financial reasons. Smith said the county will spend more than $10 million in overtime for law enforcement this year including at the jail.
He said the diversion programs gives them much-needed bed space. The flow of state inmates is halted until further notice. So, state inmates who would normally move out are still at the detention center. That continues to push up their numbers toward their 5,000 person cap. He said they’ve reached 3,900.
According to a state jail dashboard run by the ACLU of Texas, Bexar County exceeds the state average for capacity. The jail started the year that way.
Smith also said this may give them an opportunity to address the specialized and lingering homeless inmate issue.
“The homeless people are a particular problem because many times they’re in for minor charges,” he said. “Some would argue they probably shouldn’t be, at all.”
Homeless inmates do not, generally, have the funding to make low bonds for minor crimes. They sit inside the jail. Some like, Janice Dotson, could not raise a $300 bond, just $30, to get out. She died of natural causes, according to jail officials.
An attorney for her family, who is suing, said Dotson spent five months in jail without seeing the inside of a courtroom.
Smith said the jail diversion may lift the morale and work crunch for detention officers. Some, he said, are working two mandatory overtime days a week because more than 280 vacancies have not been filled.
“So, there’s a hidden cost that isn’t factored into the cost of electricity, meals and guards,” Smith said. “There’s a human cost to our own county employees.”