Jail Bookings Will Resume for Drug Use, Other Misdemeanors In Downtown Seattle
The new policy is in addition to the city's proposed contract with a jail in Des Moines.
By Erica C. Barnett
The King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention has agreed to begin booking people arrested for simple misdemeanors, such as violating a recently passed law criminalizing public drug use and possession, at the request of interim Seattle Police Chief Sue Rahr, PubliCola has learned. The new policy will only apply to people arrested in the so-called Downtown Activation Zone, which stretches from the Chinatown-International District to the Denny Triangle, north of Belltown.
According to the mayor's office, the agreement is no different than other agreements with the county to jail people committing otherwise non-bookable misdemeanors in special "emphasis areas" like the corner of 12th and Jackson; however, the downtown zone is orders of magnitude larger than prior emphasis areas, and the change in policy has no end date, unlike hot spot policing efforts.
Since the COVID pandemic, the jail has not been booking people arrested for most misdemeanors. Initially, the jail stopped booking because of health concerns; more recently, the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention has restricting bookings because of a chronic shortage of guards at the downtown jail.
According to SPD spokesman Eric Muñoz, the new policy is already in effect, and officers have been given authority to use their "discretion" to decide which people to book into jail and which to divert to other non-law-enforcement options, such as the CARE Team, We Deliver Care, and LEAD. Muñoz said officers haven't been directed to focus on any offense in particular. The jail currently books people accused of driving under the influence and domestic violence, as well as people identified by City Attorney Ann Davison's office as "high utilizers" of the court system.
"It really will come down to the individual officer and the discretionary decision they make," Muñoz said. "Obviously, downtown, we do have prolific drug use, so I imagine a lot of officers will make that arrest, but we do have a CARE program, we have diversion, so there are a lot of options. So it will come down to the discretion of the officer."
Sending people to jail is unlikely to have a significant impact on drug use and other misdemeanors downtown, because the vast majority of people jailed for misdemeanors are in jail for three days or less. According to numbers provided by the DAJD, among this group of people held for short periods, the average stay is 1.2 days, or just over 24 hours.
The average daily population of the downtown jail is typically somewhere between 800 and 900 people, with another 600 or so in the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent. DAJD spokesman Noah Haglund said the department is "approaching the upper for the number of jail residents we can safely house with current staffing." The department hopes to hire another 70 corrections officers for the jail, which is down from a shortfall of about 100 officers for most of last year.
Haglund added that it's " impossible to predict an exact number of jail residents we can house, since staffing numbers are always in flux. Our capacity varies day-to-day based on factors such as the number of people we are guarding in the hospital as well as court appearances and medical appointments outside the jail that require transports. Also, the need to separate people into different housing units based on gender, medical needs, or behavioral problems means that some housing units won’t be completely full but will still require the same number of staff to operate."
The decision is separate from Mayor Bruce Harrell's decision this week to move forward on a contract with the South Correctional Entity, a jail in Des Moines where the city hopes to send misdemeanor defendants from Seattle. According to an internal SPD memo, the city plans to use SCORE to jail people who commit misdemeanors outside downtown.
A spokesperson for Harrell said that "booking in the King County Jail will remain the preferred option for the City. Prior to beginning bookings at SCORE, the City will create clear policies providing guidance on which crimes and detainees may be booked at SCORE."
At least six people have died at SCORE in just over a year. Under the proposed interlocal agreement between the city and SCORE, Seattle would have to pay to transport inmates from Des Moines to downtown Seattle for all court hearings, which are frequent in misdemeanor cases. King County ended its short-lived contract with SCORE last year.
Through a contract that has not been "rebased," or updated to account for inflation and capital costs since 2017, the city pays for about 195 beds in the downtown jail, of which about 80 were filled, on average, last month. In the past, the city and county have agreed to use some of the funding for unused beds for health and housing programs, and last year, the council voted to place a proviso, or hold, on $3 million of the jail bed funding with the intent of putting that money toward inflation on future jail costs or other, non-jail purposes.
Earlier this week, Council President Sara Nelson said that when she learned only 80 city-funded beds were full, her response was "I want my money back." However, Haglund says that because the city hasn't been paying the true cost of those beds, "there is no underspend, no money to return."
"While the city's bed use is lower than the total outlined in the contract, they have not been paying what it actually costs the county to house people they bring to the jail," Haglund said. If they had and were being billed at the actual cost to the county, even at their current lower billable population, they would be paying a similar amount as what they’re paying now. There is no underspend, no money to return."
thank god