Other Facilities’ Excess Strains Jails, Report Says

Large local jail systems are packed with inmates but are being forced to take additional convicts from other overcrowded correctional facilities, a Justice Department report issued Sunday concludes.

Large city, county and township jails were operating at 102% of their rated capacities in mid-1984, the report issued by the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics said.

A total of 621 large local jails housing nearly 75% of the nation’s jail population held 173,100 inmates on June 30, 1984. They were designed to hold a maximum of 169,900, and 134 of the jails were under court order at the time to reduce their population. Large jail systems were defined as those with more than 100 inmates.

24% House Transferees

The study found that 24%, or about 150, of the nation’s large local jails were forced to house extra inmates transferred from other crowded correctional facilities in 1984, the latest year for which figures are available. In 1983, 130 such facilities were put in a position of handling spillover from other jails and state and federal prisons.

About three-fourths of the 150 jails that held inmates because of crowding somewhere else in 1984 were holding them for state authorities, the study said.

The number of inmates held because of crowding elsewhere rose 41% to 6,200 during 1984 compared to the previous year.

“Prison overcrowding has reached crisis proportions in many areas because of shortsighted public policies which require tougher sentencing and longer prison terms, while neglecting to adequately staff our correctional facilities,” said Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

The union represents 50,000 corrections employees nationwide.

“The study continues to indicate that there is excessive crowding in all correctional facilities,” said Charlotte Nesbitt, policy project director of the American Correctional Assn., a group of 20,000 corrections professionals. “We hear quite a bit about overcrowding in prisons, but crowding in jails is as serious.”

Nesbitt said alternative sentencing is one answer to overcrowding. Alternative sentencing includes detention in residential facilities and use of work-release programs.