New Sales Tax to Fix Portage County Jail Overcrowding Issue

 

By Ashlyne Wilson and Alexis Oswald

*Audio Story done by Alexis Oswald*

Over the last two years, the Portage County Jail has seen an alarming increase of overcrowding in the female population. While the prison is permitted to have 34 female inmates, they are constantly averaging around 40 to 45, and may see even more on the weekends.

Last November, the jail pushed for Issue 18, a levy that would provide the facility with $1.2 million to make more room for the female inmates. It failed.

Since the levy failed, the Portage County Commissioners are going to impose a sales tax.

Starting Jan. 1, 2016, the sales tax will take one penny for tax off of every $4 spent in Portage County. This will generate $5 million a year. The money will convert the female pod so that instead of living in separate cells, the inmates will be living in a facility similar to a dormitory that could hold as many as 30 more women. This is projected to happen within the first year of the sales tax, and will cost around $1.6 million plus an additional $400,000 to hire more personnel.

“It’s not a popular decision,” says Sheriff David Doak of the Portage County Jail. “However we are at a point now where this is the alternative. One morning, I came in here about two or three months ago and we had 76 female inmates. We’re permitted to have 34.”

During those times, the prisoners were sleeping on the floor in plastic bunks called “boats.” Officers and sheriffs were literally stepping over the prisoners. Doak is afraid that if this problem goes on much longer, an inmate will sue the prison and the federal government will have to get involved. “We either put on a sales tax now and do an expansion, or the problem is going to be something that the courts are going to get involved in. I’m reasonably sure that it’s a matter of time before something like that happens.”

In addition to the facility expansion, the commissioner’s office is working on using the sales tax to form a rehabilitation program to help with the heroin epidemic in Portage County, the single cause for the increase in female inmates.

“Part of the issue that we deal with is the recidivism rate and jail is not the answer to all of this,” Doak days. “When someone is addicted, they’re not thinking straight and they’re out committing crimes in the community to support the addiction. When they come in here, by default this is becoming a detox center and we don’t have the facilities for it.”

Most of the offenses in the female population are the drug related crimes they commit to support their addiction. The offenses include writing bad checks, stealing, Internet crimes, robbery, and in rare cases even murder.

Kathleen Chandler, the Vice President of the Portage County Commissioners, says that the judges in the probation department would like to keep the inmates in the jail a little longer so that they have time to recover after detoxing.

“When they’re in jail they’re not getting treatment and they’re in there for just a short period of time,” she says. “To [keep them in longer] and offer counseling and treatment while they’re in jail will be fairly costly, but I think that it’s something that will work better than what we’re doing now because then there’s a hope that when they leave they may not go back to their old habits.”

Chandler says that they are also helping to support recovery or sober house so that once the women who’ve had treatment in jail can get additional counseling and stay there for a period of time. “One reason that we have the sales tax is not just to have space for those who are committing the crimes,” she says.  “But also to help to provide treatment and detox so that if we can reduce population that goes in for addiction by half, it will be better for all of us.”