News Photo by Julie Riddle Corrections Officer George Kuznicki and Dispatcher Randy Idalski monitor inmates at the Presque Isle County Jail, which is regularly filled to capacity. A state task force has offered suggestions to reduce county jail congestion

ALPENA — Jails are too full.

So stop putting so many people in them, suggested a state task force charged with finding a solution to the problem plaguing many counties.

The Michigan Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration, a committee created in spring to address the seeming disparity of a 20% drop in statewide arrests in the past decade coupled with an almost-tripling of county jail populations since 1970, presented a report to the Legislature earlier this month. Made up of law enforcement officials, attorneys, legislators, victims of crime, and people who were formerly incarcerated, the task force after months of study came up with 18 suggestions for how to keep fewer people behind bars.

Stop taking away driver’s licenses, it suggested. Write more tickets, make fewer arrests, and give shorter jail sentences or no jail sentences at all.

Some Northeast Michigan jails are, indeed, bursting at the seams, and many area law enforcement and court officials agree that changes to the reasons people move in and out of jails could improve the court system and be fairer to residents.

Still, those same leaders say, it’s not necessarily a one-size-fits-all decision.

“There’s a lot of people out there who don’t get in trouble because they don’t want to go to jail,” said Alcona County Prosecutor Tom Weichel, advocating for caution as the state considers changes that could take away a county’s ability to decide who it wants to keep in jail.

NORMAL STATES OF EMERGENCY

If a jail’s population exceeds 95% of its capacity for five consecutive days, a sheriff is required to release prisoners who fit certain criteria.

After a week at 100% capacity, a sheriff must declare an overcrowding state of emergency, according to Michigan statue.

At the Alpena County Jail, it’s normal to declare a state of emergency one or two times a year, according to Jail Administrator Scott Gagnon.

By the time it is about 80% full, the jail is well past the point of being crowded, Gagnon said. Separation of men and women means not all cells can be filled to the maximum, and high-risk inmates affect the way space can be used.

A simple plumbing issue can drastically affect living conditions, he said, in a building where up to 69 inmates fill square footage that might equal the size of a one-family house.

In 2019, Presque Isle County paid $16,290 to Montmorency County to house inmates who didn’t fit in Presque Isle County’s own, 23-bed jail.

The larger, 42-bed Montmorency County Jail in Atlanta, which once was used to house Michigan Department of Corrections inmates, is oversized for its county’s needs. It houses Presque Isle County inmates as a source of revenue, Montmorency County Jail Administrator Lori Stanley said.

Full jails like those in Alpena and Presque Isle counties would be less full, the jail task force said, if police and courts would put fewer people into them, if people who shouldn’t be there could be placed somewhere else.

DRIVERS LICENSE SUSPENSIONS

A woman’s driver’s license is suspended for not paying child support. She needs to get to her probation appointment, but she can’t find a ride.

So she drives, is pulled over, and is arrested.

She can’t go to work the next day because she’s in jail, and she’s fired.

Such scenarios are why reducing driver’s license suspensions tops the list of recommendations offered by the task force.

In Michigan, a driver’s license can be suspended for violations unrelated to public safety, such as failing to pay court fines or child support, not showing up for court, or illegal drug use.

Taking away a court’s ability to suspend or revoke driver’s licenses, except for traffic offenses directly related to safety, would help clear jail cells and remove obstacles to complying with other court demands, said Bill Peterson, Alpena County commissioner and member of the governor’s task force.

MENTAL HEALTH

Another area of great concern for the task force, Peterson reported, is the universally high percentage of county inmates with mental illness.

At any given time, roughly half the Alpena County Jail inmates have been prescribed psychotropic drugs to treat mental illness, according to Alpena County Sheriff Steven Kieleszewski.

Some of those need to be incarcerated, despite their mental illness, as a repercussion of their crime, the sheriff said. Others, though, would be better off receiving mental health treatment instead.

Placing people with mental illness who have committed a crime somewhere other than jail isn’t always an option, he said, because, in northern Michigan, there just aren’t enough other places to put them.

Crisis intervention teams, utilizing trained police and corrections officers to respond to and de-escalate mental health crisis situations, would be an asset to the region, according to Kieliszewski, who hopes to model such a program locally after those used by other sheriff’s offices.

BONDS

Money, in the form of bonds, opens cell doors, something the task force says is unfair to poor people.

People arrested for first-offense, non-violent misdemeanors are generally released without having to make a payment of any kind, Gagnon, the Alpena County Jail Administrator, said. Others are assigned a bond amount which must be paid before they can be released.

Sometimes, the inmate — though not yet proven guilty of a crime — can’t come up with the money and has to stay in jail.

Deciding a bond amount, like sentencing, is a highly individualized process, and the number of beds available at the local jail can’t be a consideration, said Thomas LaCross, 88th District Court judge in Alpena.

“What matters is public safety and the presumption of innocence,” LaCross said.

However, to promote fairness, and to empty jail cells, non-violent offenders should nearly always be released immediately after arrest without the deposit of any money, the task force report said, unless the individual poses a threat to the community or may not come back for court appearances.

But releasing more people more quickly may make it easier for someone to be released for crimes involving assault or injury, Kieliszewski, the Alpena County sheriff, cautioned.

“When someone is incarcerated for these types of crimes, this may be the only time when a victim has some peace or feels a sense of safety knowing that they are not going to be re-harmed,” he said.

SENTENCES

Cells would be less full if judges didn’t use jail time as a sentencing tool so often, the task force said.

Unless someone admits to or is convicted of a crime that hurt or endangered someone or something, they should be sentenced with a fine, community service, or some other non-jail, non-probation sanction, the report suggests. Probation only, with no jail time, should be the norm for many felonies, the task force recommends.

But a decrease in jail sentences means a decrease in the ability to use incarceration as a deterrent, Weichel, the Alcona County prosecutor, said.

In a small, rural region, Weichel said, courts and law enforcement officers usually know the people in the community and “have a pretty good idea who is dangerous and who’s not, who’s likely to reoffend and who’s not.”

Sentencing restrictions and bond conditions that automatically release people for most crimes take away a community’s ability to decide who it wants to have in jail, Weichel said, and potentially put a community at risk.

VICTIMS

Whatever decisions are made about incarceration, victims should be at the forefront of everyone’s concerns, Kieliszewski said.

The treatment of people accused of crime should also reflect a consideration of the people they are accused of hurting, the sheriff said. Incarceration shouldn’t be just “a little slap on the hand.”

Funding for personal protection orders, law enforcement training, and counseling services for victims should be made available, the task force said in its second-to-last recommendation.

Protection and services for victims is already addressed in the Alpena area by multiple agencies and services, including sexual assault response training for law enforcement and victim assistance offered by Alpena’s Sexual Assault Response Team, Hope Shores Alliance, the Victim Services Unit of the Alpena County Sheriff’s Office, and the crime victim advocate position in the county prosecutor’s office.

FINANCIAL IMPACT

The recommendations of the task force include some great ideas, said Gagnon, the Alpena County Jail administrator, but could have a large financial impact on our court system.

Increased staffing at the prosecutor’s office as well as the courts would be required to keep in step with all the changes that could come about as a result of the report.

As a county commissioner who keeps an eye on his county’s budget, Peterson, who represents northern Michigan as a member of the task force, made sure the state lawmakers in the group paid attention to the potential financial impact of their recommendations to the Legislature.

Hopefully, he said, “if they mandate stuff, they’re going to pay for it.”

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

More recommendations

Other suggestions of the Michigan Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration:

∫ Police should be allowed, and expected, to give appearance tickets instead of making an arrest for controlled substance use, disorderly person, and other low-level, non-violent misdemeanors.

∫ Pretrial release conditions that require drug testing, electronic monitoring, or in-person reporting are “significant restraints on liberty,” and their use should be limited.

∫ If payment of fines for civil infractions would cause undue hardship, courts should be required to offer an alternative to payment, such as community service.

∫ Diversionary courts and other non-incarceration options that allow people to stay out of jail and maintain their jobs as long as they adhere to a rigorous probation period should be used as incarceration alternatives where possible. Alpena, Alcona, and Montmorency counties all have drug, veteran, or juvenile courts. No diversionary courts are available in Presque Isle County.

∫ Sheriffs should no longer be allowed to charge inmates a daily fee. At the Alpena County Jail, a $25-per-day charge for sentenced inmates is intended to help cover the cost of food, medications, and other care provided by the county. In 2018, the jail collected 8% of the amount billed, according to the Alpena County Sheriff’s Office.

COMING MONDAY

Check out Monday’s edition of The News for a look at how law enforcement officials use arrest discretion as jails fill up.