If you’ve ever had your house or car broken into, aside from feeling angry, violated and helpless, you want to see the person who did it to you receive a measure of justice.
You’re not too interested in what “jail diversion” option might be available to the miscreant. You just want to see that person in an orange jump suit for a suitable amount of time. Such is the story of the new Polk County Jail, which opens Wednesday and is located near the east mixmaster of I-80/35. Such is the story of any jail, actually. That’s why they exist – to protect law-abiding citizens from people who have no qualms about doing damage to the rest of us.
Polk County is, by far, our state’s largest county. We’ll be pushing almost 500,000 folks when the government does their next census in 2010. That’s great. Polk County and central Iowa have been a terrific economic engine for Iowa and, from my perspective, that engine is just getting warmed up. Other counties are showing some economic growth, make no mistake, but don’t kid yourself; Polk County is the big dog in this story – and probably will be for some time to come.
But, with the good always comes a little bad. Crime is part of the detrius that follows metropolitan areas and dynamic growth, sad to say. when that happens, punishment and justice also must be part of the mix.
The new jail that taxpayers approved recently will cost $63 million. That number is solid. The jail will come in on budget. Period.
What has us scratching our heads at the Supervisor’s offices is the ongoing operating cost. It’s not that no one anticipated operating costs; it’s just hard to get a handle on them.
I will say, both Republicans and Democrats have worked very well together to produce a financial plan that we can afford. None of this has degenerated into partisan fingerpointing. Nor, should it. The Blues and the Reds are elected to govern, not whine about each other – and that’s what we’ve done.
What’s so hard about figuring out the operating costs? Well, it’s a moving target. Here’s why: of the 1,100 or so inmates we generally hold at the jail, about half of them have been farmed out to other counties in Iowa and Missouri. That would include male and female, juvenile and adults.
Each county carries different costs. Each locale is a different distance, obviously, so transportation costs vary. Add to that, on the revenue line, an uncertain federal participation, costs become even a little harder to gauge.
However, as close as can be determined, the new jail will be a wash, costwise. We spend about $8 million for out-of-county inmate housing. That’s right $8 million per year. And, the annual cost of hiring new staff and associated expenses will be about, you guessed it, $8 million.
Where we expect to see savings, though, is in transportation. There will still be transport to the ancient Polk County Courthouse downtown for court dates, but transport from Ankeny is a whole different playing field than constantly driving vanloads of prisoners from Des Moines to Bethany, Mo. or various Iowa county jails.
The other question mark is federal participation. The Feds will have prisoners here and they will pay us to hold them. That’s good because that helps us meet our expenses. At this point, however, they haven’t pinned down a range of how many – or how few – people they want us to hold or for how long.
Yes, we still believe in punsihment, that hasn’t changed. But, many of our “repeat customers” invariably hold some drug-related addiction. The Sheriff will also provide in-custody substance abuse treatment, which we need to break the cycle of repeat criminal offenses by addicts trying to feed their drug habits. The new jail will more than double the in-custody treatment services.
The Sheriff is currently able to provide 62 beds for in-custody treatment and that’s been pretty successful in getting people back into a crime-free life and out of other people’s homes and vehicles. The Sheriff will now offer 128 beds of treatment. How well will that work in preventing recidivisim? Obviously, we don’t have hard numbers but I believe it’s an investment that will pay dividends by preventing repeat crimes and getting some people off the taxpayers’ backs and onto the tax-paying rolls.
With the opening set for tomorrow after years of planning and hard work, the Polk County Jail is a good example of what we can accomplish with a bipartisan effort atvarious levels of government.
Jail costs would have been an easy one for the Republicans and Democrats to demagogue in hopes of scoring a few easy political points with voters. But, we didn’t. Instead, we all sat down and worked it out until a good plan was formulated. And, that’s a good diversion program!
