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| Columbia presses state to change inmate release policy |
| By thestate.com |
| Published: 04/20/2011 |
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Columbia officials are pressuring the State Department of Corrections to change how it releases inmates at a Greyhound Bus station on Gervais Street. Every month the department releases hundreds of inmates who have completed their sentences and have nowhere to go. State law requires the department to buy those inmates a bus ticket back to the county that sent them to jail. Every month, as many as 270 released inmates from Columbia’s nine state prisons — including maximum security Broad River Correctional Institution, which houses some violent offenders — cram into the small waiting room of the Greyhound Bus Station on Gervais street. These drop-offs happen as early as 3 o’clock in the morning. The inmates have no cash, just checks for what’s left over from their prison accounts. This frustrates Columbia City Council and some members of the Richland County legislative delegation, who say the arrangement “does not set everybody up for success,” according to State Rep. James Smith, D-Richland. “I don’t want to suggest they are out there committing crimes,” Councilwoman Belinda Gergel said. “The bottom line is, I think there are some public safety issues here we need to make sure we’re on top of.” Reported crimes near the bus station on days inmates are released are the same as days when inmates are not released, according to an analysis of five months of crime statistics by Martin Ring, a policy analyst at the Columbia Police Department. “There was not anything close to an identifiable pattern around those release dates,” Ring said. However, the analysis was of “a tight geographical area around the bus station,” according to Columbia Police Chief Randy Scott. Scott said officers plan to expand their search of reported crimes beyond the bus station to search for patterns. On April 1, the department released 156 former inmates at the Greyhound Bus Station. Seventy-six inmates were released in the morning and 80 arrived in Columbia on a transfer bus from the Charleston Greyhound station in the afternoon, according to a report Scott gave the City Council’s public safety committee last week. Nearly all of the inmates dropped off in the morning were on a Greyhound bus by 7:30 a.m. The transfer bus arrived at noon, and those inmates were gone by 3 p.m. Five of the inmates stayed in Columbia. The bus station on Gervais Street is open 24 hours. It has five payphones, an ATM, four vending machines, a few benches, bathrooms, a Tekken 3 arcade game and a Toy Taxi — where for 50 cents you can try to grab a stuffed animal with a robotic claw. A TV tuned to CNN babbles in the corner and the ticket office also sells cold drinks and frozen Hot Pockets. But the released inmates don’t have cash. Instead, the state writes them a check for the balance in their EH Cooper Trust Funds, accounts where family members can send money to inmates to buy snacks and other items. “The drop-off is in the middle of the night without any money,” Gergel said. “I don’t think releasing people in the middle of the night generally is a good policy.” William Byars, the recently appointed Corrections Department director, declined to comment. But spokesman John Barkley noted that the bus station is open 24 hours, and the early morning drop-offs are to ensure the inmates “make the bus they are supposed to be on.” Greyhound spokeswoman Maureen Richmond said the company works with the Corrections Department to “make sure we can accommodate the additional passengers” on release day. As for the money, Barkley said what’s left in the inmates’ accounts varies from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars. “If people knew that they had that cash they could easily become a victim,” Barkley said, adding that a corrections officer stays at the bus station until all of the inmates have left. Byars has had several meetings with city officials about the drop-off locations. Read More. |
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