Dec. 8, 2008 – In a continued effort to reduce jail overcrowding, the Cook County Board of Commissioners reauthorized Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart last Wednesday to transfer up to 175 detainees at one time from the Cook County jail to facilities in other Illinois counties.
In addition to improving conditions for inmates, who are sometimes stuck sleeping on the floor in overcrowded cells, the plan saves Cook County millions of dollars each year, said Steve Patterson, spokesman for Dart. However, critics of the transfer program question its efficacy, as well as the motives of the sheriff's department.
Under the program, up to 100 male detainees in Cook County could be transferred to Jefferson County and up to 75 to Kankakee County at a cost of $50 or $60 per day, respectively. In addition, Cook County would need to cover all medical and transportation expenses for those detainees.
It now costs Cook County about $117 per day to house and feed each of the county's 9,389 detainees, plus an additional $30 to $40 a day for the approximately 940 detainees suffering from medical problems, said Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica (R-16th), who was the only one of 17 commissioners to oppose renewing the contracts. That means the county currently spends more than $1.1 million a day to house all detainees.
At best, the program could save the county almost $3 million a year if the jail population hovers above the 10,000-person capacity and the maximum 175 detainees get sent to facilities in other counties.
From October 2007 to October 2008, Cook County paid about $1.5 million to Kankakee County and about $920,000 to Jefferson County for boarding. Currently, 22 Cook County detainees are housed in other counties.
But given transportation costs and the increased likelihood of court delays when detainees' access to counsel is limited, the transfer program could cost more than holding all detainees in Cook County, Peraica said.
"This is going to end up costing us more — and unnecessarily so," he said.
Peraica said the board should address overcrowding at a higher level, arguing the sheriff's office is intentionally keeping the jail population high to justify its $400 million-plus annual budget.
"The jail population is being artificially held at high levels to maintain patronage hiring and a very high budget," he said.
Rather than transferring detainees out, he said, Dart should place non-violent drug offenders on electronic monitoring, which would allow them live at home and be supervised via global positioning systems at a cost of $30 per day.
Malcolm Young, executive director of the John Howard Association, a prison watchdog group, agrees the county could manage the number of detainees better if it fully used alternatives like electronic monitoring.
"You'd rather have your local jail handle the population that's being put into the local jail," he said. "Shipping inmates out to another jurisdiction is one measure — you know, other jurisdictions have done this before — that has to be taken in some circumstances. I'm not sure those circumstances exist in Cook County."
The John Howard Association has been monitoring jail overcrowding in Cook County since 1982 under a consent decree stemming from a 1974 lawsuit filed by an Dan Duran, an inmate, against the Cook County sheriff, in which Duran claimed his right to due process had been violated by the prison system. The association visits the jail weekly and provides regular reports to the county on its living conditions.
Young said transferring detainees out of Cook County also poses a problem for their families and attorneys, who would have to travel up to 280 miles to Jefferson or 65 miles to Kankakee, neither of which, he said, is easily accessible by public transportation.
"It's harder on the inmates; it's harder on their families and it's harder on their attorneys," Young said.
Patterson said while he agrees that electronic monitoring would help remedy jail overcrowding, Dart believes it is Chief Judge Tim Evans' responsibility to select candidates for electronic monitoring, not the sheriff's. Evans was not immediately available for comment.
Nonetheless, Patterson said, the transfer program has been a success so far.
"It's worked out great," he said. "We're saving about half the cost, so we've been happy with the way it's worked out."
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