PLATFORM : Jail Booking Fees

It’s the cumulative effects of these changes that are going to have an effect on the city. With the jail booking fee itself, cities will look to one another to see what we can do to better utilize the space that we have. Some cities have their own space, and we will see them maximize that space in lieu of taking them to the county. We also will see a real change in procedure in the cite-and-release cases. Those are people that the city will take into custody and instead of taking them to the county, they will be released on their own recognizance. So instead of having the county do that, we would rather do that locally. That could have a substantial impact. As cities adopt that stance it will have an adverse effect on the county in terms of what they expect on the booking fees and on the county’s revenue. What’s significant is that with the additional $700,000 in new mandates there won’t be any new services to the public. Another concern is that the county’s budget problem isn’t going to be resolved just by jail booking fees.