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The Dallas County Jail is too crowded, a growing problem that is costing taxpayers millions of dollars and one that county leaders have been slow to solve.
Dallas County has the seventh-largest jail system in the country and the highest incarceration rate among Texas' five largest counties.
Jail populations are influenced by crime rates. But in Dallas County, many people are awaiting trial in jail unnecessarily, according to jail population numbers, judges and lawyers. And at $33 a day to house an inmate, taxpayers are picking up the tab.
Other issues that have led to crowding include:
o Dismantling of the county's pretrial release program that helps low-risk offenders get out of jail on reduced personal bonds
o Delays in transporting inmates to state prisons
o A district attorney policy requiring the testing of drugs before cases can move through the system
Judges, court coordinators, prosecutors, defense attorneys, court managers and the Sheriff's Department share some role in the size of the jail population. But some county commissioners say coordination and cooperation is lacking.
But so are policies from the commissioners to address crowding, which has attracted federal scrutiny and has been judged to endanger the health and safety of inmates and guards. It's costing millions of dollars in overtime to staff the jail and keep an overflow facility open.
"Counties struggling with these issues should get decision-makers around the table and come up with policies," said Nicole Porter, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas' prison and jail accountability project.
Susan Anderson, president of the Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, said county leaders have to look at the big picture when considering policy decisions.
"You have to spend money to save money. No one is willing to do that," she said.
Commissioners say they are willing to try new things, such as restoring the pretrial-release program and bringing in an expert to evaluate the problem.
"I'm getting real frustrated because I don't think everyone is on the same page," said Commissioner John Wiley Price, chairman of the county's jail population committee.
Within county's control
Some issues are beyond the county's control, such as rising crime and lack of bed space in state mental hospitals and substance-abuse programs.
Other problems are avoidable.
Some inmates have been sitting in the jail longer than a year after being sentenced when they should have been in state prisons.
For example, Sheldon Roberts, 25, was sentenced in May 2005 to life in prison for fatally shooting a pregnant woman. But he wasn't transported to a state prison until last month.
And Kendell Murphy, 26, was sentenced in April 2005 to 35 years for stabbing a man to death but was taken to a state prison only last month.
Chief Deputy Edgar McMillan Jr. said clerical errors were to blame for those delays. He said jail staff will conduct an ongoing audit to ensure that inmates are shipped to state prisons when they're "paper ready."
Other inmates sit in jail when they could be out on bond.
The Dallas County Jail has the highest percentage of inmates awaiting trial on low-level, nonviolent charges in Texas - almost double that of Harris County, according to numbers sent to the state.
As of the beginning of July, 594 Dallas County inmates were awaiting trial on misdemeanor charges, according to recent numbers sent to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. The same report showed 1,016 inmates awaiting trial on state jail felonies, the lowest-level felony punishable by up to two years in a state jail.
Combined, that's nearly a quarter of the total jail population, which as of July 1 was 7,289, according to county numbers.
Some Dallas County judges, prosecutors and court managers say that those numbers are inaccurate and that inmates were categorized incorrectly. But most don't dispute there are too many people in jail because they can't afford bail.
"We want people in there who are dangerous rather than people who can't afford to get out," budget director Ryan Brown said.
Part of the problem is that Dallas County doesn't have a pretrial-release program common in other counties. The program gets low-risk, low-level offenders out of jail with reduced personal bonds, usually between $20 and $50.
Without consulting district judges, Dallas County commissioners dismantled their pretrial-release program several years ago, arguing that it was costly and inefficient. Since then, it's been scaled down little by little, Mr. Brown said.
"It points to poor leadership," said the ACLU's Ms. Porter. "It's what's going to continue to overcrowd the jails."
District Judge John Creuzot agreed, saying there are plenty of inmates who could be released on personal bonds.
"It was extremely ill-advised, and we're paying a price for it now," he said. "We should be smarter about what we're doing with them [inmates] after they're arrested."
Commissioners will vote this summer on whether to restore pretrial services.
Congested dockets
A growing number of pending cases in Dallas County courts is clogging dockets.
Last year, the county added two felony courts to ease the backlog - the first new felony courts in 15 years.
Some Texas counties, such as Travis and Bexar, have been using "rocket dockets" to more quickly dispose of cases. Prosecutors use them to quickly set cases for trial and offer low-level drug offenders plea deals during their first court appearance.
The Travis County district attorney's office started rocket dockets in 2002, and Bexar County implemented them the following year. Travis County case dispositions that used to average 120 days were averaging about 30 days the following year.
The Dallas County district attorney's office does not have the resources for that, said Eric Mountin, a supervisory chief prosecutor. He said the county also doesn't have enough prosecutors, clerks and judges to process inmates in 24 hours like some counties.
Mr. Mountin said his office has a similar process for speeding up case dispositions in which grand juries are waived for qualified offenders who are then offered plea deals.
But it hasn't been used enough, he said, because of lack of coordination among the courts and defense attorneys.
Another problem was District Attorney Bill Hill's drug policy enacted in 2002 to prevent a repeat of the fake drug scandal in which dozens of innocent people were arrested.
Under the policy, drugs must be sent to a lab for analysis before drug offenders' cases can move. The turnaround time was lengthy at first because of staff shortages at the county's crime lab, said DA spokeswoman Rachel Raya. It has since improved to about 20 days, she said.
"This policy was not designed to reduce jail overcrowding, this policy was designed to hold law enforcement accountable," she said.
At the end of 2003, 755 defendants were waiting in jail for drug analysis results, according to the county budget office. Last year, that number was down to 265 at the end of the year. However, in other counties, defendants charged with possession are released from jail pending drug analysis, said Dallas County Chief Public Defender Brad Lollar.
Judges trying to help
Dallas County has several diversion programs designed to keep nonviolent substance abusers and the mentally ill out of jail by sending them to treatment programs in lieu of prosecution.
But most are relatively new and aren't being used enough, officials and defense attorneys say.
Probation revocations also drive jail crowding. Last year, 47 percent of Dallas County probationers were revoked, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Two Dallas County criminal district judges are trying to change that.
Judge Creuzot and District Judge Robert Francis run special programs for repeat nonviolent offenders that require them to get treatment and then follow up with the judges regularly.
Teresa May-Williams, an SMU professor, found in a recent study that Judge Francis' court reduced recidivism by 41 percent and that Judge Creuzot's court reduced it by 27 percent over a recent three-year period.
The programs also reduced the likelihood of rearrest, she said. If all 17 felony courts in Dallas County did the same thing, it could make a difference, she said.
County Administrator Allen Clemson said the county has not made progress on ideas that have been discussed, such as community courts where lower-level offenders could be quickly arraigned and accept plea offers.
Other ideas included standardized plea deals for certain offenses and centralized plea courts with a large holding area, he said.
Mr. Clemson said that hiring an expert to study successful initiatives in other counties will help Dallas County devise a plan. The county take bids for the job.
"No one is able to paint a true, clear picture of who is in jail for what," he said.
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