County targets crowded jail

Salt Lake County officials hope to use increasing pressure on their corrections system to bring about lasting change in the way they do things.

Several physical realities are now combining to give the corrections issue considerable urgency: The Adult Detention Complex on 3300 South is full (at just less than 2,000 inmates), and Sheriff Aaron Kennard is looking at a long, hot summer when crime rates traditionally increase.

At the same time, law enforcement types in the county and its municipalities are trying to figure out how to implement a study done by consultant Alan Kalmanoff, released a month ago, recommending ways to relieve jail overcrowding.

Additionally, the County Council is right now in its budget adjustment period, where it could allocate more money toward corrections, and the county-owned Oxbow Jail, a few blocks west of the main jail, is standing empty, with discussions about selling or leasing it to the state officially dead.

A deal whereby the state would have paid $7 million to buy Oxbow died last month, and a proposal to lease it to the state met the same fate last week, when Gov. Olene Walker sent the county a letter saying she wasn't interested.

Kennard has pushed hard to reopen Oxbow (closed when the main jail was completed four years ago) to relieve the continual inmate population pressure, but with everything else going on — not to mention the $1.6 million price tag to reopen it this year — the County Council Tuesday decided against it, at least for the time being.

Yes, the sheriff is between a rock and a hard place, but "the sheriff's always between a rock and a hard place — that's the nature of the job," Councilman Joe Hatch said.

"We need to use this pressure to make improvements that are long, long overdue," Councilman Russell Skousen said. "We've got that pressure — let's use that pressure to effect some changes."

The feeling of council members was that, should they authorize funds to open Oxbow, the urgency of implementing the Kalmanoff study's recommendations (including sentencing criminals to the sheriff's custody instead of jail, which would open up possibilities of alternative sentencing) would be relieved, making the study just another piece of paper advising good things that are never carried out.

The county had a similar study done a decade ago that was never implemented.