From: "Kaldjian, Paul J." <KALDJIAN@uwec.edu> Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 10:23:49 -0600 Subject: FW: Eau Claire County Local Justice System Assessment Message-ID: <E7DFB9C7847A6242BCF1CEDE9AC1D1E3525EA3A140@CHERRYCOKE.uwec.edu>
I also sent a cc of the message below to the Spectator, and they have alre
ady contacted me about following up. In the words of their news editor, "t
he expansion of the current jail or construction of a new one is of great i
nterest to the students. This report [read email message below] would furth
er intensify this interest." As such, I believe it is an issue of interest
to faculty and administration as well.
Three city council members have responded to the email, one said that he we
nt to a meeting regarding the assessment report, two saying they had never
heard of it.
paul
Dr. Paul Kaldjian
Associate Professor of Geography
Dept. of Geography and Anthropology
University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire
Eau Claire, WI 54702
From: Paul Kaldjian [mailto:paavo22@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 6:02 PM
To: Kaldjian, Paul J.
Subject: Fwd: Eau Claire County Local Justice System Assessment
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paul Kaldjian <paavo22@gmail.com<mailto:paavo22@gmail.com>>
Date: Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 5:21 PM
Subject: Eau Claire County Local Justice System Assessment
To: david.adler@charter.net<mailto:david.adler@charter.net>, >, aehedavis@char
ter.net<mailto:aehedavis@charter.net>, rhughes5785@charter.net<mailto:rhugh
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hanan.brandon@hotmail.com<mailto:buchanan.brandon@hotmail.com>, thomas.vue@
dwd.state.wi.us<mailto:thomas.vue@dwd.state.wi.us>, >, dave.citycouncil@charte
r.net<mailto:dave.citycouncil@charter.net>, deklink@charter.net<mailto:dekl
ink@charter.net>, kemp_eccouncil@hotmail.com<mailto:<mailto:kemp_eccouncil@hotmail.
com>, bvonhaden@charter.net<mailto:bvonhaden@charter.net>, bsmsbh@yahoo.com
<mailto:bsmsbh@yahoo.com>, tom.giffey@ecpc.com<mailto:tom.giffey@ecpc.com>,
mail@volumeone.org<mailto:mail@volumeone.org>, andrew.dowd@ecpc.com<mailto
:andrew.dowd@ecpc.com>
Dear City Council Members and Eau Claire press,
I would like to bring your attention to a report released at the very end o
f February by the US Department of Justice entitled Eau Claire County Loca
l Justice System Assessment (US Department of Justice, National Institute
of Corrections, Jail Division, NIC TA-08J1010). According to the report, i
t was commissioned by the Eau Claire County Board of Supervisors and the Ea
u Claire County Criminal Justice Collaborating Council. You can read the e
ntire report before many members of the County Board by going to http://tyr
onecoal.com/NIC2008.pdf<https://webmail.uwec.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=230c870
7ce554437ac0549b4890d50c5&URL=http%3a%2f%2ftyronecoal.com%2fNIC2008.pdf>
(Appendix at http://tyronecoal.com/NICAppendix2008.pdf). For anybody inte
rested in Eau Claire's jail issue, the report is informative, engaging and
easy to read. It also appears damning.
In current discussions regarding the jail, the generally accepted premise h
as been that the need for increased capacity is obvious. But, according to
the report, this is hardly clear. Further, in highlighting the paucity of
information on the jail and the jailed, the report explains that plenty of
data is available but little has been done with it. This, in turn, explain
s the public's lack of knowledge, and thus participation, in the entire jai
l expansion debate. The report clearly suggests that the county has too li
ttle information for it to know what it needs in terms of a new and expande
d jail facility. In fact, an overall tenor of the report is that Eau Clair
e is jailing more people than the state or any of the other counties in the
ir comparative analyses.
According to the report, the authors/consultants were in town on 19th-21st
of February 2008 to conduct assessments of jail capacity and occupancy (pag
e 14), the very day that the County Board of Supervisors voted to pass the
first $25 million bond toward the jail. It is inconceivable to me how the
county can confidently state that $59.1 million will fix the problem when,
as the report demonstrates, it is clear that they do not even understand th
e problem. Unless I am missing something fundamental, it is nothing short
of unbelievable that the county ramrods the jail through before examining t
he report and openly debating its recommendations. The findings, the quest
ions the report raises, and the recommendations are numerous, extensive and
hardly trivial. They include encouraging public involvement in defining t
he purpose of the jail, tapping into expertise at UW-Eau Claire (Political
Science, Criminal Justice and those with information skills), and exploring
the various alternatives to incarceration.
Because the county knew that this report was still underway but very near c
ompletion at the time of the 20 February Board meeting (a board meeting wit
h up to a hundred anguished citizens in attendance), it will be very diffic
ult to convince our community that the county was trying to be anything oth
er than deceptive. If I were a County Board of Supervisors member, I would
be livid to have had this information withheld, voting to spend millions o
f dollars on a cart before knowing anything about the horse.
Below, I have pasted a few excerpts from my quick reading. These are not i
ntended to take statements out of context, but to provide evidence that jai
l inadequacy, the apparent driver for the current expansion, is not how dis
cussions should proceed. In fact, the more I consider the report, the mor
e it seems that specific plans for a jail and its expansion are premature.
Thus, any talk of WHERE to put the jail is inappropriate when we do not kn
ow its purpose. Until the system wide and policy problems are understood an
d addressed, building a new jail will - as some county supervisors even exp
ressed concern over on 20 February - bring us back to where we are now.
We expect, and hope for, a row when the public learns of this report, its f
indings and recommendations.
Sincerely,
Paul Kaldjian
Dan Drumm
Excerpts
1) "Eau Claire is safe and its people are pretty well behaved (page 18)."
2) "The jail is used to house a wide range of inmate types. It is attemptin
g to do too much. Almost anyone can be admitted. A very wide variety of fed
eral, immigration, out of state, state, and local inmates reside there. It
is a mixture of three distinct groups: "people we are afraid of, people we
are upset with and people we do not know what to do with (page 19)."
3) "More clearly defining the purpose of the jail is a first step in managi
ng the flow into the jail and the length of stay. This will help define the
number and composition of the jail population. Until and unless this is do
ne, the jail will remain crowded (page 19)."
4) "The predominant view, the predominant strategy for coping with the grow
ing workload has been to seek additional resources, add jail beds, and add
program capacity. This represents a near singular strategy aimed at trying
to outrun growth by adding capacity. But the system is up against substanti
al resource limits and the strategy is coming under increased scrutiny beca
use, to some, it does not seem to be working (page 20)."
5) "A first conceptual trap has been the view that jail crowding is "the pr
oblem." A related notion is the view that jail crowding is "the Sheriff's p
roblem". It turns out that jail crowding really just a symptom. It is a sym
ptom of problems within the larger justice system. Success requires a syste
m-wide approach. One must literally go outside the perceived "problem" in o
rder to solve it (page 20/21)"
6) "Some of the people who were interviewed seem to believe that a new jail
will "solve the problem". In fact, a new jail, by itself, may not change v
ery much. New bed space may be filled quickly. It is also possible that the
new emerging programs will expand the total number of people under correct
ional supervision, also fill to capacity, and have very little impact on th
e number of people in jail (page 24)."
7) "Recommendations include increased public participation and better analy
sis of existing data to provide information on the jail population, its cha
racteristics and needs, put into a proper form, analyzed and routinely rep
orted out. . . . Understanding these population dynamics is essential to un
derstanding why the number of people in jail is increasing (or falling) (p
age 29)."
8) "Between 2002 and 2006, the Number of Index Crimes Reported to law
enforcement in Eau Claire County decreased -14%. . . . . When these numbers
are adjusted to account for increases in the countywide population during
this period, the decreases are even
larger (page 11)."
9) "Adult arrests in Eau Claire County increased by 24% during this period
. This is in sharp contrast to the declining Index crime rates in the Count
y, and in contrast to the statewide adult arrest trends (page 12)."
10) "The Eau Claire County crime prone age group (age 15-24) can be expecte
d to peak in 2010, then decline substantially by the year 2020. This age co
hort is expected to grow at about one half the rate of the general county p
opulation through 2030 (page 12)."
11) " The basic message: These trends do not support the view that the gene
ral County population has become more criminogenic. Instead, the increase i
n the demand for criminal justice services appears to stem from changes in
the response of the criminal justice system. In conjunction with the other
analyses that have been prepared, it appears that a larger number of people
have been placed under correctional supervision, under more stringent beha
vioral requirements, and for longer periods of time (page 12/13)."
12) "Utilization of the Jail bed space resource is not well understood by j
ustice system officials, general officials of county and city governments,
or the public. The jail data was not organized to permit analysis. It was d
ifficult to determine how the jail space is being used. The classification
system is a mystery. Bookings and length of stay of the various inmate type
s are not being analyzed. The prior studies that have been done have been u
niformly weak in detailing and describing the various subtypes of inmates i
n jail and how much space they occupy (page 19)"