Metro Pulse/Insights/Justice Center

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by Jesse Fox Mayshark

We're now either six or 11 years into Knox County's justice center project, depending on what you use as your starting point—the 1989 court order that capped the downtown jail population, or the current master plan process, which started after County Executive Tommy Schumpert was elected in 1994.

There are people who say we have nothing to show for all those years of talks and plans and aborted efforts. That's not true. We have, first of all, a state-of-the-art detention facility in East Knox County that holds 656 inmate beds and can be expanded to hold 1,500. Any expansion would have to deal with the problem of whether the county is bound by past promises not to house maximum security prisoners in that facility, but both the definition of "maximum security" and the nature and terms of that promise need to be better understood and evaluated if they're going to serve as the basis for crucial policy decisions.

We also have reams of data on Knox County's justice system, which could and should serve as the basis for ongoing examinations of its functions and effectiveness. And we have some more or less honest dialogue going on between different branches of county government and the general public, which is never a bad thing. (There are those, especially within the Knox County Sheriff's Department, who would argue with that characterization; but for all its complaints about hyperbole and distortions of facts, the KCSD has failed to make a convincing case of its own.)

What we don't have, by any definition of the word, is a crisis—certainly not one that merits the kind of urgent action County Executive Tommy Schumpert is positing to County Commission, in the form of his recommendation for $54 million worth of new and renovated buildings. You can torture the numbers all you like, but with our jails currently operating at only 67 percent occupancy, you can't make the county's need for new cell blocks a pressing case.

More to the point, all the arguing over how many cells we need and where they should go misses some much larger issues: Who is in jail in Knox County? Why? Are there better ways for us, at the local level, to deal with issues of crime and punishment?

If County Commission commits to Schumpert's plan this month, there's a good chance those truly vital questions—which have more impact on the community's future than the location of any particular building—will remain unaddressed.

Consider: Of Tennessee's seven metropolitan areas (Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Tri-Cities, Murfreesboro, Jackson), Knox County has the highest percentage of inmates serving time on misdemeanor convictions—in July, 50 percent of our prisoners were misdemeanants, compared to 17 percent in Davidson County and 19 percent in Shelby County. The next closest to us was Hamilton County, with 35 percent. That's not to suggest that some misdemeanants don't deserve jail time. But it's worth asking what those other cities are doing that we aren't, by way of alternative sentencing or treatment programs.

That same month, 54 percent of the county's pre-trial jail population—people who have yet to be convicted of anything at all—were misdemeanor defendants. That was double the statewide average of 27 percent. Knox County defense lawyers have argued for years that local courts discriminate against low-income defendants by setting bonds on cases where they're not needed. The result is hundreds of people a year sitting in jail awaiting trial on minor charges.

In other words, Knox County jails are only two-thirds full. And of the people within them, two-thirds are either awaiting trial on a misdemeanor or serving time for one. Whether you take a conservative fiscal or liberal humanitarian view, that doesn't make sense. Those numbers need to be better understood and, barring some compelling explanations, drastically lowered.

Also ignored in the bricks-and-mortar debate is the problem of mentally ill defendants, who tend to revolve in and out of jail without getting effective treatment or attention. At a recent public forum, Jeff Blum of the public defender's office characterized the cycle as "serving life sentences, two days at a time." Knoxville does have access to Peninsula Behavioral Health's Mobile Crisis Unit, which keeps some mentally ill people from automatic incarceration. But there's no question the county needs to invest more in such programs. Again, it makes economic as well moral sense: one estimate puts the cost of providing treatment and keeping a mentally ill person out of jail at $10,000 a year, versus $30,000 a year in jail.

Most disturbing is the concern that as long as they have cells to fill, judges will be more likely to send defendants to them. If that sounds unfair to the judiciary—many of whom have lobbied for the reforms discussed above—it's worth noting that the county jail population surged from 500 to nearly 700 the year the new detention facility opened, despite a relatively stable crime rate. As crime rates have fallen significantly in subsequent years, the jail population has declined too, but not as much as you'd think. We're now averaging about 675 people in Knox County cells—more than there were in 1993, when Knoxville had twice as many reported violent crimes as in 1999. Fewer crimes, more inmates. Why?

Of course, new cells are only part of the plan Schumpert and Sheriff Tim Hutchison are proposing. There's also a new intake center and a $12 million new headquarters for the Sheriff's Department. The intake center certainly needs to be addressed; its current temporary housing at the detention center is inconvenient for everyone. But District Attorney General Randy Nichols, the fiercest critic of the jail plan, says new technology provides several options for booking and arraigning prisoners, reducing the need for a single central location. Those options should be explored.

As for the sheriff's HQ, anyone who's visited the department's current offices in the City County Building can attest to their close quarters. But there are options besides simply constructing a new, isolated building in East Knox County (the symbolic implications of which are unpleasant, given the perennial and obnoxious turf wars between the sheriff and the Knoxville Police Department). The E-911 center is considering vacating its space in the City County Building, which would potentially give the Sheriff's Department nearly half a floor of additional room. And if the existing City County jail blocks were renovated, which by all accounts they need to be, there may be other possible space for law enforcement offices.

Nichols is right that the current plan, driven as much by politics as good policy, is not the best one the county could come up with. It is probably not the least expensive nor most efficient plan. It is certainly not the most logical. If County Commission goes ahead with it as is, they may have some difficult questions to answer at the next election, as will Hutchison. (Schumpert, who has always said he'll only serve two terms, will be spared that scrutiny.)

But a jail is just a jail, no matter where it is or how much it costs. It's a building with bars on the windows and human cages inside. How well and judiciously we use it will ultimately say a lot more about the character of Knox County than all our fights over its blueprints.