Migrants, mentally ill fill jails in county
Michael Kiefer
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 2, 2008 12:00 AM

County jails from coast to coast are increasingly becoming repositories for the mentally ill, illegal immigrants, and people accused and convicted of drug crimes, according to a national study released Tuesday.

The report mentions Maricopa County, but the findings do not exactly match the situation here.

"Jailing Communities," a study published by the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, claims that jails are gobbling up resources that would be better spent on education, community mental health and drug-use-prevention programs. advertisement




Local governments spent $97 billion on criminal justice in 2004 - $19 billion of it for county jails - while spending less than $37 billion on libraries and higher education, the report said.

Among other findings:


• Jail populations have increased even though crime rates have not.


• Fewer people are released from jail on their own recognizance, and they spend longer periods in jail before being released.


• Jails have become "the new asylums," with as many as 6 of 10 inmates suffering from mental illness.


• Up to 10 percent of jail inmates in the country have been sentenced to prison and are doing time in jail cells rented to state prison systems.


• Blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately represented in jail populations.

Maricopa County is listed on the Justice Policy Institute's Web site as having the nation's fifth-largest jail population. That fact is not surprising, considering that Phoenix is the nation's fifth-largest city. The other four largest jails fall in line with population: The jails are in counties that contain Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Houston.

Maricopa County saw the second-highest growth in jail population, after Broward County, Fla., between 1996 and 2006. But the jails here do not mirror some of the report's findings.

"I think we run the biggest mental institution in the state and that shouldn't be the case," said Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. "Mental illness, they're correct, they should not be in our jails. There should be alternative ways to deal with mental illness."

According to Deputy Chief Gerard Sheridan, there were 160 inmates in psychiatry housing in Maricopa County's jail system on Tuesday, and approximately 1,500 inmates, or 16 percent, of the total jail population of 9,300, were taking psychotropic drugs for mental-health reasons.

The illegal-immigrant population Tuesday stood at about 1,800 inmates, or 19 percent of the population.

The average stay for inmates is higher now than a decade ago - 25.7 days last year, compared to 21 days in 1998 - but it has been dropping in the past several years, according to Sheridan.

Maricopa County, unlike other counties nationwide, does not rent space to the state prison system.

And unlike other counties in the U.S., minorities are not disproportionately represented in the Maricopa County Jail population, and instead mirror the makeup of the community at large.

The Justice Policy Institute report recommends that communities improve procedures for getting out of jail, that they divert the mentally ill and drug abusers to diversion programs, and that they find alternatives to jailing people convicted of non-violent crimes.

Sheridan points out that many of those decisions are dictated by legislation and the courts.

Donna Hamm, a prison-reform advocate, called the Justice Policy Institute study "a sad commentary on the so-called justice system in our country." Although she agreed with the report's conclusions, she said that politics are the greatest obstacle to improving the system.

"As long as we have politicians who are willing to sacrifice proven, effective solutions to public-safety issues in favor of powerful political-action groups and lobbyists who make big money off of the criminal-justice system as it is currently conducted, we will not see real progress," she said.

Arpaio said: "My philosophy is, I got the vacancy sign, it's always there. If people want to book them into the jail, I don't care for what, we'll take them."



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