Adding Jail Beds, even without jail doors is still added incarceration

CONSIDERATIONS & TALKING POINTS FOR WASHINGTON COUNTY FULL QC MEETINWashington County has an ongoing history with solving for community needs with more incarceration. We as a community are at a crossroads with decisions we make now having very lasting impacts to the taxes we pay and the world that our children inherit. The want to help can feel compelling to accept a "solution" at almost any cost. But, bear with us and consider that there are other ways forward that help, heal, and free our community.G - THUR JULY 17TH , 6PM https://www.washingtoncountyar.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/32232/638878474247227941.

Agenda link above for the Washington County QC July 17, 2025 meeting where the items 17.1 would begin to invest into an old county jail facility to be more jail beds prior to completing a full assessment of the complete building needs and costs and prior to assessing if a women's program could be housed somewhere else, like the 88 NEW beds being constructed at the current 710 bed facililty. Below is how hte item reads and some things to consider and concerns for our community. This has been a conversation since 2019 and we will have to unpack over time what discussions have been had and the windy road that the county seems to always go back to adding more beds as any type of "solution".

ITEM 17:  A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE WASHINGTON COUNTY JUDGE TO APPLY FOR A GRANT ON BEHALF OF WASHINGTON COUNTY Item 2025-R-005 (17.1)

THE COUNTY IS ADDING JAILBEDS THAT VOTERS SAID NOT TO NOV 2022 BALLOT. IF THIS MOVES FORWARD 710 CURRENT BEDS + 88 BEING BUILT AT WCDC + 30 MEN’S PROGRAM BEDS IN OLD CSU + 70 WOMEN IN 110 N COLLEGE BUILDING = 898 BEDS AN INCREASE OF 26%

• Expansion of jail beds voters said no to in November 2022 at ballot with current 30 bed CRI male + 70 proposed women units + 88 beds being built with your COVID relief monies for a total of 188 beds an increase of 26% jail beds.

  • Current expansion of 30 male beds in the Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) replaced the voluntary mental health alternative that police and the community had to offer mental health services to 

    • 4% increase in jail beds at operating cost of $1mm yearly

  • Proposed old ACC unit/old WC jail at 110 N College building proposed to house 70 women to offer programs that for some reason have not and are not offered at the current jail facility despite the community ask for year

    • 10% increase in jail beds 

      • County Judge Deakins states that the women’s CRI program will cost $1mm alongside the men’s but being realistic if the men’s program for 30 costs $1mm, estimate this program costing $2.3mm yearly

  • No one’s talking about the 88 beds being built today at the current Clydesdale jail facility (710 facility) that the county stated is an effort to get people off of the floor and for “COVID mitigation”. This bed construction is underway at over $18 MILLION dollars using covid relief monies.

    • These beds will increase total jail beds by 12% and with current daily cost rate per bed, this is estimated to cost $2.6mm+ yearly to operate and maintain.

  • Let’s do the math on these ADDED jail beds $1mm + $2.3mm + $2.6mm  = $5.9mm additional yearly for operations & maintenance.  The current ¼ cent sales tax does not cover the $26million jail operations needs at the current 710 bed facility in South Fayettevillelon Clydesdale Rd and 1/4 cent only generates $17-$18million annually.  This means that a tax increase will be likely or some other way to pay for many millions of yearly expenses as grants alone will never cover this cost.

    • What other alternatives have been looked at that can assist folks?

• Possible ALTERNATIVES to offer programming without expanding into the 110 N College Building

  • Use the current South Fayetteville Clydesdale jail.  Why are programs not happening to the full population that is at the jail?  115 women are in the jail as of 07.10.25. So the plan is again to exclude part of the pretrial population and only help a selected set of folks

  • The county is currently constructing 88 beds brand new that could be allocated and set aside for use for programming if they so desired.  Today, the county is operating and making decisions as though these beds are not in process and going to be available.  This would leave the 110 N College building available for any other public good for the county that the community has expressed desires to see expansion of mental health and substance treatment, childcare, & job training in feedback given during the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) discussions.

THE COMMUNITY HAS ASKED FOR PROGRAMS. WHY ARE WE CONCERNED WITH THE (CRI) COMMUNITY REBUILDING INITIATIVE MODEL THE COUNTY IS PURSUING?

• Current men’s program was entered into without a competitive process that looked at all available reentry providers:

  • Goodwill, Pearl, Oasis, Magdalene Serenity House, AJRC - to name a few

• Current men’s program touted as “award winning” only in operation 3 months & has not detailed out the licensure of those providing services, the required quarterly reports have not detailed out the “program activities, client outcomes, and financial expenditures” as required

500 PEOPLE ARE IN PRETRIAL DETENTION IN ANY GIVEN DAY IN WASHINGTON COUNTY. THESE INDIVIDUALS ARE TOO POOR TO BUY THEIR FREEDOM. THEY ARE NOT SENTENCED AND HAVE LIMITED ABILITY TO ACCESS RESOURCES. THE COUNTY’S PROPOSED AVENUE FOR PROGRAMS LEAVES OUT MOST OF THOSE HOUSED IN THE JAIL

• Why is the county not offering programming in the jail today? Small efforts to offer very limited GED, bible study, but other jails in Arkansas are offering programs in these main facilities. Washington County excuse to build more beds is to offer programs & services that are needed in the current facility

Increasing Jail Capacity Does Not Address Root Causes of Over-Incarceration and Does Not Promote Public Safety.

Regardless of what it is being called, the “Expanding Community Rebuilding Initiative,” will actually increase the number of jail beds available in Washington County.  If the old facility holds 70 beds and we move individuals from the Washington County Detention Center to that facility, that opens 70 beds in the Washington County Detention Center.  The county judge can talk all day that this is not true, but when he does that, he is gaslighting and getting around the facts.

Those opened beds will not remain empty.  They never have and they will not now.  Currently Washington County has an agreement with Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U. S. Marshall’s Office, Homeland Security, and others

Increasing jail bed capacity has the potential for those additional beds to be used by ICE for detention purposes.  We must have clear, unequivocal reassurance from the county sheriff that these new beds will not be used to house ICE detainees.  Nationally there’s news everyday of how the current administration is seeking more places to detain immigrants, many of whom, data shows, have not been convicted of crimes and are, in some cases, American citizens.

Participation in ICE detention harms our community by fostering distrust, fear, and division.  It separates families, leaves children without parents, diverts local law enforcement resources from their primary responsibilities.  

Instead of creating more jail beds, we should be focused on implementing the data-based recommendations made by the National Center for State Courts in the 2020 Criminal Justice Assessment Study (CJAS).  Those recommendations include a “robust pretrial services division,” expanding drug court, expanding veterans’ court, addressing mental health issues, helping connect people who are in jail pretrial (sometimes for months) to services like housing, food, transportation.

Whatever you want to call it, expanding the CRI, adding jail beds, expanding jail capacity will lead to more incarceration, not less.  As it has in Washington County for the last fifty to sixty years. We know much more now than we did back then about incarceration and how it harms people and destroys families.  We should use that knowledge to do better.

The CRI program is not the best path forward.  Why?  Because people going through the program are still incarcerated.  They are locked away from their families, their jobs, their support systems and they are, under our US Constitution presumed innocent.  

The CJAS recommendations include establishing a pretrial services program. Here’s a brief summary of what that would look at:

• Trained pretrial workers would interview individuals when they are first brought to the jail;

• An assessment tool and background history will be used to help courts make informed bail decisions, including nonfinancial;

• Ensure release options are realistic and as unrestrictive as possible, help individuals get to and from court appearances and court ordered appointments to ensure their appearance in court (thus decreasing failure to appear charges)

• Individuals released under pretrial will not be sitting in jail costing taxpayers millions of dollars annually; they can be going to work, supporting their families.

DIRECTLY FROM THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE ASSESSMENT STUDY FOR WASHINGTON COUNTY

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P. 78 CJAS:  

“The final step in the forecast process is to build a final ARIMA model using the county

population and bookings as predictors. Figure 43 shows the outcome of the jail population

forecast process. The statistical model essentially says that, if nothing changes, the jail’s

population in 2030 will be 70% larger than it was in 2019.”

P. 79 CJAS:  

“Essentially, the forecast model indicates that if nothing changes from the end of 2019

and capacity was not an issue, the result will be a massive increase in the jail’s population.

Thus, rather than treating the forecast as a prediction of population size that should be checked in 10 years to see if it was correct, the forecast should best be viewed as a warning that the pressure to grow the jail if nothing were to change in the criminal justice system of Washington County will be significant.”

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The Problem of ‘Organized Abandonment’  Spencer, M. (2023, August 31). Beware The Healthier Cage. Inquest. https://inquest.org/beware-the-healthier-cage/ 

• This is a term that describes the ‘the intentional disinvestment and neglect of certain communities by state and private entities, creating conditions that allow for extraction, privatization, and increased policing.’

  • A key consequence of this method is the neglect and disinvestment of public services particularly for low-income communities.

• The primary method of service delivery for people who experience incarceration should not be their incarcerators. Where this is the only method ‘provided,’ people have to first BE incarcerated and then RECEIVE services. This presents a circular fallacy - get in trouble because you lack resources to address trauma, poverty, and neglect in your community and the receive resources while incarcerated to become ‘fixed’ and then be released back into an underresourced community. 

• Talking about healing in terms of only the number of spots in a pretrial incarceration program as a way forward is to continue to frame healing as punishment. 

• Root causes lie in people’s ability or inability to pay bail, lack of pre-incarceration diversion programs, repeated incarceration of individuals due to addiction, familial conflict, lack of stable or adequate income, lack of quality housing, and transportation barriers among other things.

• While this is a new strategy and that can be exciting, it still centers incarceration as the primary vehicle of services and fails to address the larger issue of no community-based care. In particular, the replacement of the Crisis Stabilization Unit with the Community Rebuilding Initiative represents a resolute shift from experimentation with community-based alternatives to incarceration to experimentation with programs while people are incarcerated. Ultimately, this is still an expansion and investment into carceral solutions for carceral problems rather than community-driven solutions to community disinvestment.

• Those who are not a part of the 30, or proposed 70 people that are deemed deserving of care, remain at the Washington County jail. The same treatment and conditions continue there despite proposed changes at a different site - medical neglect, lack of preparation for reentry. This method of selective care exacerbates inequalities for those not selected and concentrates health care, reentry, and job resources into carceral settings. 

• This is not to say there cannot be wins in these types of programs nor that advocating for changes to the material conditions of those incarcerated should not be prioritized. It is to say that expecting jails and pretrial incarceration to be sites of healing and restoration is a non-starter, and it is not the most effective nor the most efficient solution.

WASHINGTON COUNTY WAS PURSUING AND HAD LAID OUT AN OUT OF THE JAIL SOLUTION IN RECENT YEARS YET DID NOT PURSUE IT- pretrial services.  This video of Nick Robbins (Returning Home) shows as cochair of the CJCC the full lay out of a pretrial service program that offers supports and resources in the community in an out of jail setting. This same concept later Nick Robbins (Returning Home) instead worked with County Judge Deakins to make into a in jail version that Nick Robbins organization, Returning Home has been the beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars.  Millions between the CAP program run in Huntsville (only offered to men) and the almost $1mm in the CRI (offered only to men) in the old CSU building in Fayetteville.  

To view Video

https://tinyurl.com/watch-pretrial