Should the Cook County Law Enforcement Center (CCLEC) be expanded to allow non-violent inmates to stay in the county rather than be shipped to jails, sometimes as far as 200 miles away?
And will that expansion save the county money? Or keep money now being shipped with the prisoner down to other jails, in the county?
Cook County commissioners have spent the last year contemplating the pros and cons of that question, and at the committee of the whole Sept. 18, meeting, commissioners listened to a presentation from Wold Architects, who were hired in November 2017 to conduct a Master Plan for the Cook County jail needs and law enforcement spaces.
Early on, Wold recommended conducting a countywide assessment of program and space needs, so that any recommendations they would eventually make would be tied to overall county needs.
The current law enforcement center is 8,620 square feet. Wold proposes the county expand the facility to 18,419 square feet. The biggest expansion would come in the jail, which is currently at 3,920 square feet and would grow to 9,925 square feet.
If the expansion is built staffing would grow over time from the current eight to 12 employees at the jail.
The plan unveiled by Wold encompasses both current and future needs with flexible space for programs as they evolve and change.
Using jail data from 2006 to 2017 an average incarceration rate was developed.
According to projections from the State of Minnesota Demographers office, the county’s population is projected to grow to 5,518 people by 2045.
The daily population at the county jail has increased greatly from 2001 when statistics showed there was a person in the lock-up on average every other day (.06). Only .1 of that total was for women.
In 2015 there was a daily average of 12.23 people incarcerated at the LEC. In that average there was 10.96 men and 1.27 women. The ADP dropped in 2016 to 8.41 and even further in 2017 to 5.05, but, according to the Wold report, “It is expected that the ADP will trend up over time,” and peak at about 22 ADP in 2050.
From 2006 to 2017 Wold discovered there was a “steady decrease in bookings,” from a high of 222 in 2006 to 121 in 2014. Last year there were 139 bookings.
Arrest data for Cook County, the 6th District and statewide showed a decrease in arrests statewide and in Cook County court district since 2009 to 2016, the most recent data used for these projections.
Looking at court filings, the researchers discovered a decrease in court filings between 2006 (688) and 2011 (489) before a slight increase in 2012 followed by a steady decline since that time.
“There appears to be an increase in the number of probate/mental health cases in recent years as well as slight increases in juvenile and major criminal filings.”
The average length of stay has also dropped in recent years, and Wold said that could be “due to diversionary programs or changes in probating guidelines. Also, there could be shorter stays due to court sentencing.”
Statewide the average length of jail stay in 2014 was 44.07 days while it dropped to 20.41 days in 2017. In Cook County the peak was 8.7 days in 2012 and it was 2.70 in 2017.
Currently there is a jail administrator, and seven dispatcher/jailers. Wold projects that by 2030 in a 25-30 bed facility there would be one jail administrator, a half-time programmer, and 10.5 dispatchers/ jailers.
Using (assumed) 2020 construction figures, Wold recommended expanding the jail by 7,200 square feet at a cost of $2,700,000. They also proposed expanding the LEC another 2,300 square feet at a cost of $650,000 wit $300,000 for LEC renovation and allowance for deferred maintenance. Total construction cost is $3,650,000 with a project cost multiplier of 1.3 for (fees, testing, and other contingencies) which brings he cost to $4,750,000.
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