S.L. County justice overhaul urged

The whole system of administering justice in Salt Lake County — arrests, bookings, charges, sentences, punishment — greatly needs an overhaul, according to a study to be released today.

The question is an urgent one. Requiring 10 percent of county revenues at present, the criminal justice system will be proportionately three times more expensive in the next decade if changes aren't made, said consultant Alan Kalmanoff.

"I would be misleading you if I said this was going to cut the public safety budget," Kalmanoff said Wednesday. "(But) this will keep it from rocketing into the stratosphere."

County Mayor Nancy Workman commissioned the study last year to see what could be done about chronic overcrowding at the county jail at 3300 South and 900 West, officially known as the Adult Detention Center.

Kalmanoff and his associates said implementing the study's recommendations (they made 60) would relieve pressure on the jail, provide punishments more appropriate to the crime and help the system focus limited resources on the worst cases.

One of the primary recommendations is to provide alternative punishments to jail time. Sheriff Aaron Kennard has repeatedly said that at 1,950 inmates the jail is at capacity, and Kalmanoff says that constitutes wasted resources.

Kennard declined comment on the study until after its official unveiling today.

Building, maintaining and operating a jail is extraordinarily expensive — $100,000 per bed to build and $60,000 a year to house each inmate, Kalmanoff said — and much less expensive alternatives exist, such as having minor offenders work off their sentences.

Workman has bought into the philosophy.

"Would you rather have them out there cleaning out toilets and working their tails off instead of sitting in a warm room with a cot?" she said.

Alternative punishments and programs include community service, electronic bracelets, treatment and others, Kalmanoff said.

The jail is maximum security, which in most cases is akin to going after a gnat with a sledgehammer. About 65 percent of the jail's population consists of misdemeanants — people who knocked down a parking meter or shoplifted or hit their spouse or smoked marijuana — who could easily be housed more cheaply or put in work programs.