News Photo by Julie Riddle Corrections Officer Wendy Berg waits by the holding cell at the Presque Isle County jail. Like others in northern Michigan, the jail is almost always near capacity.

ALPENA–Arrests in Michigan are going down, but county jails still are full, recently released research shows.

While many of those being escorted behind bars are there because of non-violent misdemeanors, police say changes to laws and society have resulted in full cells in county jails.

Engaged to study Michigan incarceration trends, the Pew Research Center presented their findings at the most recent meeting of the recently formed Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration, offering data drawn from law enforcement, court, and jail records to create a picture of who is in our jails, how they got there, and how long they might stay.

While arrests overall have remained static statewide over the past decade for people aged 26 or older, arrests of people aged 25 or younger have fallen dramatically, reduced by almost half since 2008, according to Michigan State Police data.

Simple assault and failure to appear in court remained consistently the most likely reasons to be arrested.

Other misdemeanors, including probation violation, obstructing justice, and disorderly conduct, filled the other slots in the top-10 charges at the time of arrest.

Despite falling arrest rates, Michigan’s jail population has tripled in the past 45 years, the study showed. Jail data from 2016 to 2018, taken from 20 counties across the state — including Alpena County — indicated jail cells are regularly filled with people facing low-level charges staying for a short time.

Nearly two-thirds of jail admissions in the past three years were for misdemeanor charges. Operating under the influence and driving without a valid license made up 23% of the top 10 offenses that led to someone being lodged in a county jail.

About 80% of people arrested for operating while intoxicated or driving without a valid license can expect to stay in jail less than a week, the report indicated, but even those relatively minor crimes can lead to a sentence of a month or more up to 10% of the time.

While numbers are high for people admitted to jail for low-level infractions, most offenses represented in the jail population were more serious crimes.

In an average Michigan jail on an average day, 71% of the inmates are facing felony charges, and 40% are incarcerated for charges of assault, robbery, rape, and other violent crimes, the study indicated.

While data shows that most of the state has dropped in arrest levels, Presque Isle County’s arrest rate has risen in the past 10 years. Presque Isle County Sheriff Joe Brewbaker attributes that rise to a fresh group of young officers who recently joined the sheriff’s office. The new deputies are fair and work hard, he said, and are more likely to make arrests than officers who have been around longer, who may be more selective.

So far in 2019, 20 people have been arrested for driving without a valid license by the Presque Isle County Sheriff’s Office.

On a second offense for driving without a valid license, an arrest is automatic, according to Brewbaker, and the violator will need to stay at the jail until they’re arraigned before a judge. Someone stopped for a first offense may be arrested, at the discretion of the officer, but can be released immediately on a personal recognizance bond.

The Presque Isle County Jail, which can house 23 inmates, is almost always near capacity.

Deputies are sometimes instructed to make arrests for felony warrants only because of lack of space in the jail, Brewbaker reported. Inmates sometimes have to be lodged in other counties’ jails because cells are full.

The solution to overcrowding, Brewbaker said, is to build bigger jails.

Like many other local jails, the Presque Isle facility is aging. Built in 1974, the building was constructed in a different time, when the world of police work and crime was vastly different.

The building was designed when computer felonies were non-existent, drug crimes were rare, women were almost never jailed, and criminal sexual conduct wasn’t aided by the ease of social media and other technology.

Investigation into crime is also very different than in the past, with police able to use technology such as information retrieved from smartphones to prove an allegation, leading to more arrests.

Laws are stricter now, as well, with tough responses to probation violations bringing more people back to jail if they fail a sobriety test, fail to pay court costs, or break other probation rules.

“Back then, if you had five people in jail, it was weird,” Brewbaker said. “We average 25 today.”

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693, jriddle@thealpenanews.com or on Twitter @jriddleX.