EVANSVILLE — The coronavirus pandemic put discussions about Vanderburgh County’s overcrowded jail on the back burner for months, as arrest totals dropped and local officials’ attention was diverted.
Chatter is resuming, however. A proposal to create more courtroom space in the Civic Center Complex remains on the table. So are various plans to add wings to the jail on Evansville’s North Side, although the costliest options are unlikely to be pursued.
The jail was built with 512 beds, and it can hold up to 550 inmates. As of Monday, Vanderburgh County had 658 people in custody, with the overflow housed in Warrick, Pike, Posey and Perry counties in Indiana, as well as Jefferson County, Illinois.
It will be up to the seven-member Vanderburgh County Council to decide what construction projects, if any, can be funded. But there also are multiple voices calling for reform to help nonviolent offenders avoid stays in jail.
"We have been having issues with mental illness, and homeless people who are constantly getting incarcerated with nonviolent offenses,” said William Payne, community activity coordinator with the Pigeon Township Trustee’s office and a local activist. “I've always asked what kind of programs we can do to address that … We build more beds, but we don’t build more programs.”
Sheriff Dave Wedding is calling for a modest addition to the jail – 180 more inmate beds – along with a simultaneous review of alternatives to incarceration.
Prosecutor Nick Hermann agreed that construction must be only part of the solution.
“It’s not just physically we need a certain number of beds,” Hermann said. “We have medical needs, mental health needs and treatment needs.”
Who's in the jail?
Inmate population in Vanderburgh County grew incrementally for years before taking a sizeable dip during the pandemic.
The jail’s average daily inmate population:
• 2012: 551
• 2013: 537
• 2014: 533
• 2015: 576
• 2016: 615
• 2017: 688
• 2018: 788
• 2019: 806
• 2020: 665
Among the 658 housed as of last week, 546 were male (83%). Wedding said the current jail has only one 64-bed unit for female inmates, so several females must be sent to other counties.
The jail had 209 Black inmates housed, 32% of the total. According to U.S Census estimates for 2019, about 10% of Vanderburgh County's overall population is Black alone, while another 3% identify as having two or more races.
During 2019, Vanderburgh County incarcerated nearly 10,000 people for some type of arrest.
Drug and alcohol addiction is a major factor behind the jail's overall population growth.
Superior Court Judge Wayne Trockman for several years has supervised a drug court program, which involves treatment and daily reporting for individuals arrested and sentenced for nonviolent offenses.
Payne said drug court is a good program, but more individuals need to be made eligible for it.
Indiana's continued use of bail as a condition of pretrial release also is a problem, and it can keep indigent individuals in jail for longer periods, Payne said. A few counties in the state have stopped requiring bail.
The costs of home confinement also are excessive, Payne added.
Another reason for the jail's population surge is an Indiana General Assembly decision in 2014 to have people convicted of the state's lowest level of felonies serve their time in county jails rather than state prisons.
Such felonies, known as Level 6, carry sentences of 6 months to 2.5 years.
The local jail's population has spiked since the law took effect. Wedding, who chaired the state sheriff's association in 2019, said lawmakers show little to no interest in reversing it.
Counties receive limited financial reimbursement for Level 6 felons in local jails.
Hermann said local jails are built for pretrial detention and not for convicted individuals serving lengthy sentences.
He added that inmates ending their sentences often need assistance local jails are less equipped to provide.
"The Department of Correction does a good job with substance abuse and (helping people) be successful when they got out," Hermann said. "But instead of moving people to a prison where they have those opportunities, they are going to a county jail.
"Generally speaking, inmates are in and out out of jail relatively quick, but now you have inmates who are going to be there a longer time," Hermann said. "That has changed."
The jail also is populated by many individuals who don't show up for court, who violate protective orders, who don't pay a fine or who don't attend a required class.
In those situations, judges may ask the sheriff to lock people up.
"We just got an order out of Kentucky wanting us to arrest someone negligent for paying child support," Wedding said last week. "They are asking us to go arrest this guy on a Kentucky warrant."
Vanderburgh County's court system does a better job of releasing pretrial inmates than it's sometimes given credit for, according to the sheriff.
"On Nov. 7, 2020, we booked in 28 people. The previous day, 29. On that same date we had released 31 inmates and the previous day, 28. It’s not uncommon for us to release equal to or greater than the people we incarcerate," Wedding said.
Still, Wedding said lines must be drawn.
"If you’re a victim of a serious crime, I don’t want to be a cheerleader for someone's release," Wedding said. If they burglarize an elderly person’s home, that’s a traumatic experience. You'd think there should be punishment attached to that."
What to do about inmate overcrowding?
Judges have brought a proposal to the Vanderburgh County Council seeking to add courtrooms, using the Civic Center Complex's empty old jail space, with the intent of adjudicating more cases more quickly.
The estimated $4.5 million project would involve:
• Constructing a misdemeanor courtroom in the old jail space, as well as a gathering area outside and restrooms. The existing misdemeanor courtroom in the Courts Building would become a jury courtroom.
•Moving misdemeanor traffic and probation to the old jail space, next to the newly constructed courtroom there. The area vacated by misdemeanor traffic and probation would become what the judges called a “micro” circuit courtroom, with a conference room also added.
•County clerk’s office staff who work for circuit court would move to the old jail.
Bids for the project are due Feb. 23, said Dave Rector, City-County Building Authority manager.
When the current court facilities were built, Vanderburgh County had four judicial officers. Now, 17 judges and magistrates are needed to handle the caseload. But there's been no expansion of space.
More courtrooms would allow more trial dates to be set, Circuit Court Judge David Kiely said, and sometimes, merely having trial dates on the calendar can accelerate discussions of settlements.
"What we want to do is move more cases," Kiely said. "It's mainly criminal, but we get divorces and civil cases jumped because we don't have enough courtrooms."
Kiely conceded that the $4.5 million courtroom add would not solve the jail population problem, but he believes it would make a difference.
Others said it's possible more courtroom space would eventually help reduce jail crowding, but it's uncertain to what degree.
"Maybe it will reduce the population," said Steve Owens, chief public defender for Vanderburgh County. "Assuming the felony filings don’t go up substantially, if we are trying more cases, would we get people out more quickly? Maybe."
Wedding views an addition to the jail as a must-have, and adding courtroom space would not have nearly the same impact on the crowding problem.
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The sheriff's 180-bed jail addition is a fraction of the larger alternatives a consulting team presented to county officials before the pandemic.
The largest of those was a whopping 764-bed, $89.1 million jail addition.
Wedding believes the smaller project, combined with newfound emphasis on programming and case management, would allow the jail to group inmates properly within the facility and better address their needs.
He said that includes juveniles whose alleged crimes are serious enough to be heard in adult court.
"When you run a jail properly," Wedding said, "it should be only 80% full."
Financing jail solutions a problem
County Council members have heard about the courtroom plan in recent meetings, and Wedding likely will appear before them soon to discuss his scaled-back jail expansion idea.
The pandemic will make funding any major new project a challenge in 2021, said James Raben, finance chairman. Vanderburgh County collects an income tax for public safety purposes. The economic downturn has cut into that.
A 180-bed addition to the jail "would buy us some time" into the future, said Raben, R-First District. "But what what we are finding out in the last month or two is the pandemic is having a much larger effect on our revenue stream than we originally anticipated. That's going to have a bearing on whether we pursue that or not."
The new courtroom proposal's outcome is uncertain for the same reasons. Raben said it is possible a portion of the project could be done.
"Almost everybody on the County Council and County Commissioners recognize they are worthy and needed projects," Raben said "The likelihood of all of them happening is unlikely. We're still months out from making that decision."
Council members said they have open minds about what actions to take.
Jail crowding "is not going to go away, and we'll have to address it," said President John Montrastelle, R-Fourth District.
Stephanie Terry, D-Third District, said she will seek feedback from constituents about the jail topic, but one comment she hears often "is about the need for mental health services for people who are incarcerated and shouldn't be."