To create safety, King County needs more than jails

King County, like all counties in Washington state, is required by state legislation to securely and safely home these accused of committing a felony, and anybody convicted of a criminal offense — misdemeanor or felony — serving a sentence of lower than a yr. Every metropolis, and every county in its unincorporated space, is chargeable for housing its personal misdemeanor suspects awaiting trial.

In early 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak in America started proper right here in King County, our Division of Grownup and Juvenile Detention was among the many first companies to reply to stem the unfold of the virus. We labored throughout the legal authorized system to implement new protocols and preserve everybody within the system protected. We discovered methods to scale back the variety of lower-level accused offenders biking by means of the jails for stays of some hours to some days. The common each day inhabitants in custody dropped from round 1,900 to round 1,300.

However one other phenomenon started to emerge through the pandemic — giant numbers of individuals selecting new careers, or just retiring. This was as true of corrections officers because it was true of police, public defenders, bus drivers and others in the private and non-private sectors. In June of 2020, we had zero vacant correctional officer positions. Regardless of having employed and certified 110 new corrections officers since January, immediately we’ve 113 vacancies. Persons are working vital additional time to satisfy the wants of the in-custody inhabitants, now round 1,400.

In the meantime, the County operates the jail beneath the phrases of a authorized settlement within the 1989 case Hammer v. King County, which requires sufficient staffing ranges to forestall overcrowding and guarantee applicable service for these in custody. The necessity to keep reserving restrictions for lower-level misdemeanors will not be based mostly on philosophy or ideology. It’s about very actual workforce shortages — simply not sufficient folks all for doing this troublesome however essential work.

Neither is it about compensation. We’ve labored with the King County Corrections Guild to forge a brand new contract to retain our skilled and skilled workers. The pay is aggressive. The advantages are glorious. We’re additionally providing as much as $25,000 in signing bonuses to new hires.

Our workforce numbers will proceed to enhance and in time, all of the vacancies will likely be crammed. However even when that occurs we want extra than simply jails to create actual security for all. To rework a stagnant legal authorized system, we have to get right down to root causes, and cures, working throughout jurisdictions and governments, and collaborating with community-based organizations, to tackle foundational societal challenges and rebuild lives.

 King County is dedicated to advancing new fashions to realize this. New approaches like Restorative Group Pathways — an modern partnership that diverts younger folks from the legal authorized system and into interventions that get at root causes — search to interrupt, fairly than reinforce, the cycle of crime and squandered lives. We’re making RCP this system our neighborhood wants it to be — enhancing knowledge assortment, refining programming, constructing new partnerships and fine-tuning implementation and analysis fashions to enhance efficacy, accountability and neighborhood security.  

If jail was sufficient to forestall folks from committing one other offense, then the many years for which our nation has had one of many world’s highest charges of incarceration ought to have dramatically decreased crime. However many years of proof and expertise present that to not be the case.

When politicians and commentators peddle the fiction that jail is the treatment to what ails society, they do us a disservice. Individuals should be held accountable, even for low-level offenses. However counting on the identical previous practices will yield the identical previous outcomes — which have been abysmal. Fixing root causes, whether or not dependancy, psychological well being, childhood trauma, or lack of alternative to succeed, is crucial. So, let’s work collectively — each metropolis and neighborhood on this area — to create true, simply public security for King County.