Salt Lake County officials disagree over inmate issues

Who should be in jail?

Certainly not everyone who is locked up in the county jail, according to one county official. But figuring out who should be locked up and who would instead benefit from treatment isn't easy, as Salt Lake County officials have learned.

Treatment can prevent future crimes from happening, but releasing the wrong person on the street now could have terrible consequences, Councilman Mark Crockett said at Tuesday's County Council meeting.

No one seems to be in agreement over who should be in treatment. The sheriff says they should be locked up, while Pat Fleming, director of the county's substance abuse division, said about 45 percent of the county jail's population shouldn't be there right now. Instead, the inmates could be out receiving treatment under the watchful eye of the county. Other groups have their own estimates, but no one seems to be able to agree.

"We need to do something because we're about to make some bad decisions," Crockett said of the conflicting opinions on the data used to determine who could benefit from the county's alternatives to jail incarceration programs. "We need to know because we're either about to put the wrong people on the street or close programs."

County officials are pushing the idea of alternatives to incarceration — options that would take low-risk inmates out of the county jail and into treatment programs. But at the same time, they are cutting capacity at the county jail.

The sheriff said he is struggling to find ways to incarcerate prisoners with a full jail and a County Council mandate to cut another 300 beds by July. In fact, by cutting those 300 beds the council is also likely pulling the plug on one treatment program lauded by judges and treatment professionals alike.

To comply with the council's jail bed mandate, Kennard will close another unit by March 1. Closing those 64 beds will also mark the end of the Corrections Addictions Treatments System program, an in-house drug treatment program the council said it does not want to see shut down. As many as 85 percent of the inmates at the county jail have a drug problem, Fleming said.

Kennard said the council "jumped the gun" by closing the jail beds, adding that treatment programs will only work if there are consequences and sanctions, like hard jail time. Treatment programs won't see immediate results but will keep future offenders out of jail, Kennard said.