Empty jail beds could bring money to Davidson County

Sheriff hopes other counties house their inmates in Davidson

3:24 AM, Apr. 8, 2012
Written by
Brian Haas
The Tennessean
@brianhaas

Vanishing inmates

Davidson County’s jail facilities have increasingly seen their inmate population drop over the past several years, leading Sheriff Daron Hall to try to rent out jail space to counties in need.

Sheriff Daron Hall walks the hallways of the Offender Re-Entry Center, past empty cells, unused tables and vacant guard stations. His voice echoes as he recalls just two years ago, when this place was full to the brim with low-level suspects awaiting trials or serving out misdemeanor sentences.

“On a normal day there would be 100-plus people running around,” he said.

But instead, Hall finds himself in an enviable position in these days of jail and prison overcrowding. Davidson County has had anywhere from 800 to 1,100 empty jail beds for the past year. While many counties struggle with near- or above-capacity jail populations, Hall is trying to find ways to fill those beds and maybe even make a little money for Metro government. He estimated the jail could charge up to $70 a day for inmates from elsewhere.

“We’ve put the word out to other counties. I don’t think some of this was forecast, was able to be seen,” Hall said at a recent Metro budget workshop. “I can tell you it would be advantageous to Metro.”

The Offender Re-Entry Center can house up to 300 inmates and has been shuttered for about a year except for the few offices where transportation employees work. Hall also has closed down half of a women’s jail facility because officials can’t justify keeping it open with so many empty beds. Now, he’s in talks with Putnam County and eyeing a possible contract with the state to house juvenile offenders to make better use of that space.

“I’ve wanted to live long enough to close one,” he said, referring to closing jails instead of building new ones.

287(g) blamed

About a decade ago, Davidson County was near or at jail capacity and trying to project what its needs would be in the ensuing years. Like others, Nashville’s planners predicted an influx of women and juvenile offenders, based on a rise in both categories of offenders at the time. Both populations present challenges to jailers. Women can’t be housed with men. And juveniles, especially those charged as adults, require special care and accommodations.

But Hall said that neither prediction panned out: Both populations remained relatively flat or declined.

Hall said the main reason for his empty beds is mostly because of the immigration enforcement program called 287(g), which screens all detainees for their immigration status and forwards suspected illegal immigrant cases to federal authorities for deportation. He said he didn’t have specific data to determine how many beds were freed up by deported immigrants since the program began in 2007.

“There’s no way to avoid the fact that it has a major impact, we believe, on arrest numbers,” Hall said. “There’s no way to not have a correlation in our mind between the bed space … and when you’ve taken 10,000 people out of the arrest pool, who are not being rearrested,” Hall said.

He said some empty beds were because of a pilot jail program that gives inmates employment and community support and helps them return to society.

Elliott Ozment, an immigration attorney who is suing to stop the sheriff’s 287(g) program, said it was “ridiculous” to say it has freed up those beds, particularly without any statistical proof. He said many of the offenders swept up in the program were originally arrested for minor crimes — not crimes that would be filling up jail beds.

“I resent very much and would deny emphatically his claim that these 287(g) inmates or detainees were responsible for a wave of crime in the city of Nashville,” Ozment said. “That is ridiculous, that is preposterous. Most of the 287(g) detainees that he has been holding in his jail since April 2007 were held because of traffic offenses.”

Ozment attributed the extra beds to general crime declines and better policing.

“It could be because the Nashville police department is effective,” he said. “I think that generally, across the country, in many communities, crime is down. I think the Nashville police department could be doing an effective job.”

Regardless of the reasons, there’s no denying the appetite from outside Davidson County to fill those beds.

Potential customers

While Davidson County is trying to figure out how to fill beds, Putnam County has been struggling to keep fire inspectors happy. Chief Deputy Jacky Farley said that a few years ago, the county’s jail had 330 detainees.

It was built for 252.

The fire marshal gave the jail 24 hours to get down to capacity, spurring years of shuffling suspects to different counties.

“We have them in White County, we have them in Jackson County and Overton County, Morgan County, Marshall County,” Farley said. “They’re slowly sending them back to us, and we’re struggling to find beds available to house them.”

Sumner County may be next to contact Hall about borrowing some of those beds. Jail Administrator Sonya Troutt said her jail has room for 662 inmates. It’s now at 685, the continuation of years of overcrowding at the county’s jail facilities.

She said she didn’t even know that Hall had those extra beds and hadn’t reached out to him.

'Very expensive'

Robertson County Sheriff Bill Holt will tell sheriffs struggling with overcapacity that such a solution is helpful but not ideal. Just a few years ago, he had to send some of his detainees to Davidson County to alleviate crowding.

“We were overcrowded and they had the beds for females,” Holt said. “We just sent them over there and they took care of them. It was just very expensive.”

In addition to having to pay Nashville, there was increased cost to transport those detainees, staff transport crews and then make up for having fewer people around to actually mind the jail. But while Holt was able to build a jail to alleviate his problems, Putnam County doesn’t appear to have such a solution in the near future.

That makes the prospect of so many empty beds in Davidson County a dream come true.

“I can’t imagine that,” Farley said. “I’ve never seen anything like that. It surprised me that there even is anything like that.”

Contact Brian Haas at 615-726-8968 or bhaas@tennessean.com.

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