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| Jail crowding forces release of 148 inmates |
| By Indianapolis Star |
| Published: 09/23/2003 |
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Marion, Ind., Superior Court ordered 148 inmates released into community programs Friday after the county jail population exceeded a federally imposed limit. The action was spurred by Sheriff Frank Anderson's declaration of a jail emergency on Thursday. By Friday morning, there were 1,331 people in the Marion County Jail -- 21 more than the 1,310-inmate maximum. Aside from expected fines of $40 a day for each inmate over the limit, the crowding prompted criticism of the court's judges for not using community corrections often enough as an alternative. The 148 inmates to be released by this afternoon were serving time at the jail but had less than 30 days remaining in their sentences. Their crimes ranged from domestic battery to drunken driving and drug possession. They will be released into programs such as work release, home detention with curfew and home incarceration. Some programs allow inmates to live at home with electronic monitoring, while others require that they live in community corrections-operated housing. The order, by presiding Judge Cale Bradford, requires that inmates serving time for domestic violence be placed into work release, a program that would prevent them from returning home. The population cap was put in place in July by U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker. Her order meant to relieve chronic jail crowding, which had spurred several lawsuits against the county. The limit will drop to 1,285 on Oct. 1 on the way to a final ceiling of 1,135 by April 1, 2004. Anderson first alerted judges about the high jail population on Monday, after it had reached 1,302 on Sept. 13, said Kevin Murray, chief legal counsel for the sheriff's office. The privately run Marion County Jail II was not an option to relieve overcrowding because it was near its capacity of 992 inmates on Friday, he said. The county opened a $12 million Arrestee Processing Center this summer, which many believed would ease crowding. So far, Murray said, that doesn't appear to be happening. That leaves community corrections programs as the only way to reduce the jail population, he said -- and if criminal court judges don't use that option, Anderson's hands are tied. The work-release program had 128 of its 153 spots open Friday morning, Murray said, and home detention had 187 slots available. 'Why haven't they been used up to this point?' said Ken Falk, the legal director for Indiana Civil Liberties Union. 'Judges have to share in the responsibility of keeping the population down at the jail.' Council member Smith, a retired Indianapolis police homicide detective, saw reason to worry as the federal court's population cap decreases this fall. According to the federal judge's order, a jail emergency begins when the population is within 175 inmates of the cap, or 1,135. When Anderson sent his first warning this week, the count had flirted with 1,300. The count exceeded that number again on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday before the sheriff sent a letter formally declaring the emergency. |
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