By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Wood County was in the midst of making plans for a jail expansion when the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Now, after nearly three months of big decreases in the jail population and sizable losses in county revenues, the expansion project appears to be on hold.
The project has two focuses – one to expand the areas for booking and medical services in the jail, which is the higher priority, according to Wood County Administrator Andrew Kalmar.
The other part of the expansion is the addition of more secure female housing.
But the uncertainty of the COVID impact on the county’s finances and the jail numbers have raised questions about the project.
“At this time, we’re not moving forward,” Kalmar said last week.
Over the last three months, the inmate population at Wood County jail was thinned in an effort to slow the potential impact of COVID-19 at the facility. Within the first couple weeks of Ohio’s pandemic plan being put in place, the jail population went from 165 to 120. As the pandemic went on, the inmate numbers dropped to the 70s.
“Our numbers are the lowest since I’ve been sheriff,” Wood County Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn said last month.
As of last week, the jail still had no inmates or deputies who have tested positive for the virus.
The jail population was cut in half due to efforts at several levels.
The jail stopped accepting inmates from Cuyahoga County, which was the first region in the state to see residents test positive for COVID-19.
And local courts and law enforcement raised the bar for sending defendants to jail prior to their trials. Unless someone was charged with a serious misdemeanor or higher, they were likely to avoid imprisonment before trial, Wasylyshyn said.
“I appreciate what the judges and law enforcement are doing,” he said. “They are only bringing us people who need to go into the jail.”
But the decreased inmate populations have some people asking if those lower numbers can’t be achieved consistently – not just during a pandemic.
Across Ohio and in Wood County many inmates, who are awaiting trial, are being held not because of their suspected crime, but because they do not have the money necessary to pay for their release. During the pandemic, many judges reduced or removed cash bonds that had been holding pretrial individuals in jail.
Far fewer people went to jail in the first place during the pandemic, with sheriff and police departments expanding cite and release practices. That means instead of bringing a person accused of a crime to jail, the individual instead received a citation and a date to show up in court.
According to Claire Chevrier, policy counsel at the ACLU of Ohio where she is responsible for leading their statewide advocacy on bail reform, these rapid jail depopulation measures raise a question. “If we are releasing individuals to promote public health and safety now, can we morally and truthfully claim we should resort back to incarcerative practices once the crisis is over and still claim doing so promotes public safety?” Chevrier asked.
Stephen Demuth, a BGSU sociology professor, who has researched criminology, has also raised questions about the growing number of people in jails – not because they have been convicted, and not because of the seriousness of their crimes – but because they can’t afford to post bond.
“The vast majority of the unconvicted people are detained simply because they don’t have the money to pay a bail bond to be released while they await adjudication. Basically, they are being punished because they are poor,” DeMuth stated.
The practice has been deemed unconstitutional by many federal courts, but remains common practice nationwide, he said.
“Is it possible that the jail does not need to be expanded and that we might change who (how) we detain to fit within the existing jail?” DeMuth has asked.
DeMuth has also questioned the rationale that by housing inmates from other counties, those fees can help pay for the jail expansion.
This funding strategy “treats incarceration as a business and likely incentivizes more incarceration,” he stated.
In 2018, the Wood County jail took in $400,000 from other counties needing space to house their inmates – for $65 a day. But currently due to lack of space, the Wood County jail is turning away female inmates who require secure housing.
The county jail currently has the capacity to hold 220 inmates. The average there on any given day is 165. But the number of female inmates continues to increase. The jail can currently house 56 females. The proposed expansions could create a larger area for women, and flexible swing units that could be used by either gender.
The possible price tag for the jail expansion project is about $18 million.
While the expansions add housing flexibility, most do not require more jail staff, since master control areas are designed in the housing pods, with line of sight to every inmate area.
Wood County Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn said he supports efforts to reduce jail populations of people who don’t need to be there.
“The more we have on electronic monitoring, the better,” he said.
But the current drop in inmate numbers is an artificial level that cannot be maintained as the courts get back to business, and calls to law enforcement increase.
“I think those numbers are going to go back up,” he said.
Rather than putting both parts of the jail expansion project on hold, Wasylyshyn has suggested that the architects move forward with plans for the entire expansion. However, the booking and medical areas may be addressed first, and the female housing area later.
“We should have everything ready,” the sheriff said, since contractors are currently looking for work and projects tend to cost less if done concurrently.
