Council Committee Approves Contract With SCORE Jail in Des Moines; SCORE Inmate Died of Overdose in June
Your criminal justice-focused Afternoon Fizz.
1. The city council's public safety committee advanced a contract with the South Correctional Entity (SCORE) yesterday that will allow the city to rent out 20 beds from the jail in Des Moines, which is jointly owned by six South King County cities.
According to an analysis by city council central staff, the contract could cost well over the estimated total of $2 million a year, because that estimate does not account for the cost to pay Seattle Police Department officers overtime wages (on average, $105 an hour) to ferry people back and forth from SCORE to Seattle Municipal Court in downtown Seattle; medical services for anyone who has to go to the South King County hospital where SCORE sends inmates who need medical attention; and up to $300,000 for a new "data bridge" connecting the jail to the Seattle Police Department and Municipal Court systems.
The city could also have to pay for additional marshals at the courthouse, additional public defense attorneys to handle the increase in caseload, and potentially an eighth judge to handle cases, including first appearance cases and mental health court. Mayor Bruce Harrell, who initiated the legislation, has not identified any funding source beyond this year; the city, meanwhile, is going into the 2025 budget cycle with a deficit of around $260 million.
The beds at SCORE would be in addition to those at the downtown Seattle jail, where King County just agreed to begin booking people for minor misdemeanors committed in downtown Seattle, after a long period of booking restrictions imposed during the COVID pandemic.
The contract just gives the city the right to use the beds, but does not commit Seattle to paying for beds at SCORE on an ongoing basis. If the jail opened up more beds, the city would likely find it more convenient to house misdemeanor offenders, who usually don't spend more than a few days in jail, at that facility.
"If they solve their staffing problems, much like we have with our SPD [hiring] challenges, then we can reset those levels and then focus more on the King County Jail," Kettle told PubliCola Wednesday. "The problem is, we do have that delta" between the number of people the city wants to jail and the number of available county jail beds, "and we have to address it."
The full council is scheduled to vote on the SCORE contract on Monday.
According to the staff analysis, "Unless a specific funding source is identified (e.g., potential future KCJ savings), the ongoing costs for the use of SCORE will add to the budget deficit the City faces in 2025."
2. Last week, SCORE responded to a records request from PubliCola about a death in custody that occurred at the jail on June 27, 2023. Ismail Mamatov, a 25-year-old man, was transferred to SCORE on June 26 from another facility and booked on theft and failure to appear charges. He’d previously been held for four months at the other facility and had been incarcerated 17 other times at SCORE.
According to a report filed with the state Department of Health and heavily redacted incident reports written by SCORE staff, Mamatov was found unresponsive in his cell at around 3 pm on June 27. Fire department medics were called and Mamatov was declared dead about 3:20 pm. The King County medical examiner determined the death was caused by acute fentanyl and methamphetamine intoxication.
SCORE’s report said that a review of video surveillance showed Mamatov appeared to share an unknown substance with other cellmates, and was seen snorting that substance, though the report said he had been extensively searched prior to booking. The inmate had been subject to periodic detox checks, SCORE’s report said, but one check was missed just prior to Mamatov’s overdose.
In its report to the State Department of Health, SCORE lays some blame for missing the 120-day deadline for submitting a death in custody report to the state on the King County Medical Examiner's Office, noting “Additionally, the autopsy report related to this fatality was not available to SCORE until June 13, 2024, more than 120 days following the incident, which was an additional reason for the extension.”
But according to Kate Cole, a public information officer with Public Health – Seattle & King County, SCORE waited until May 21, 2024 to request a full autopsy report from the medical examiner’s office, and “they received the report from us on 6/12/24.”
The death is one of six at SCORE in a little over a year.
—Erica C. Barnett, Andrew Engelson