Locking someone up for several months, then saying, “Go, and sin no more,” doesn’t work.
Salt Lake County officials say that 70% of the inmates from the county’s corrections system reoffend within three years. And that’s on top of the many low-level offenders who never really spend any time in jail because there isn’t room.
That means more crime on the street, more people demanding police response, time in court, all of which costs taxpayer money. At the same time, Salt Lake County hasn’t expanded its jail capacity since 2001, a period in which the county’s population has grown by more than 30%, or hundreds of thousands of people.
We’ve kicked the can down the road for nearly 25 years, risking the safety of communities across the valley.
All that, plus the growing realization that the county’s homeless population continues to increase and create issues, has led the Salt Lake County Council to approve, on a vote of 8-1, Mayor Jenny Wilson’s plan for an expanded jail and new facilities to help people live outside the criminal justice system.
To that end, county voters are being asked to approve a $507 million bond to pay for the expansion of the Adult Detention Center (more commonly known as the county jail) in South Salt Lake, close and demolish the decrepit Oxbow Jail and add facilities for inmates who need mental health treatment or other assistance to reintegrate to life on the outside.
The plan is a good investment that attacks the problem both from a criminal justice and a human services angle. Voters would be wise to approve it.
The money will pay for a big part of the county’s role in a larger bipartisan plan, backed by the state and Salt Lake City, to deal with the unavoidably interrelated issues of crime, mental health and homelessness.
It includes what the county calls a Community Reentry Stepdown Unit, a place where inmates who are soon to be released will get help from social workers and others who will identify individual needs for treatment and support, rather than throw them onto the streets.
And also something called the Justice and Accountability Center, which is a lower-security facility for those accused or convicted of low-level crimes, designed to hold them accountable but also to offer whatever assistance needed to get on with their lives without committing any more crimes.
The county says a day in such a center will cost taxpayers $75 per person. That’s $60 less per person per day than keeping them in jail, for a projected annual savings of $6.8 million a year.
The cost of all this is estimated by the county to be some $627 million. But selling the Oxbow site on 1100 West is expected to bring in $20 million, and the county plans to devote $100 million of banked COVID relief money to the plan.
That would leave the taxpayers on the hook for $507 million. The county estimates that the annual cost to the owner of an average home, one worth $602,000, would be $59 a year. An average business property would pay an estimated $107 a year.
Yes, that’s more cost on the backs of the already overstressed taxpayer. But the benefits to public safety would be well worth it.
