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Democracy Dies in Darkness
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Justice reforms take hold, the inmate population plummets and Philadelphia closes a notorious jail
By Tom Jackman April 23 at 5:55 AM Email the author
When it comes to pretrial release, few other jurisdictions do it D.C.’s way]
Kenney cited two new approaches he thought were particularly successful. One is “early bail review,” for people still in jail after five days with bonds of $50,000 or less. Kenney said 84 percent of those reviewed were released within five days, and more than 92 percent had shown up for their subsequent hearings. A second initiative involves police diverting drug-related offenders to treatment clinics, and since December “no one who’s been in the program has been rearrested,” Kenney said.
And Part I crime in Philadelphia — murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and auto theft — is down three percent over the past two years, the mayor said.
“What you have in Philadelphia,” said Laurie M. Garduque, director of justice reform for the MacArthur Foundation, “are shared values with respect to a fair and effective justice system and protecting public safety. And a realization that there are better ways to hold people accountable instead of incarceration. When you start to shrink the footprint of the system, and do it safely, you’re in a posture that’s more fair and more effective.”
In July 2015, Philadelphia had 8,082 people in its six jails. The reforms began in 2016, and last Friday, Philadelphia had 5,394 people in its jails, according to the city’s Department of Corrections. That’s a 33 percent decrease, to a level not seen since the 1990s. The House of Correction, with no sprinkler system and no air conditioning, is down to 199 inmates in its 166 cells, so Kenney announced it would close by 2020. “Reaching the point where we can shutter this facility once and for all,” Kenney said at a news conference, “without needing to build a new prison, this is a milestone.”
Maryland’s highest court overhauls the state’s cash-based bail system]
Philadelphia’s newly elected district attorney, Larry Krasner, announced in February that his office would no longer ask for cash bail for low-level offenses, which he said made the system “fairer for the poor and for people of color.” A longtime defense attorney, Krasner said in a news release, “There is absolutely no reason why someone who will show up for court, is not a flight risk, and is no threat to their neighbors and community, needs to sit in jail for days because they can’t post a small amount of bail. It’s simply not fair. We don’t imprison the poor for poverty. This new cash bail policy will not only save the taxpayers money by allowing low-level defendants to maintain their freedom, but it will begin to level the economic and racial playing field in our courtrooms.”
Krasner’s predecessor, Seth Williams, initially involved the city’s prosecutors in the project, and the city’s municipal court judges also have endorsed the reforms. Another new initiative that the prosecutors and judges have not opposed is early parole. The public defenders began offering to assist convicts in convincing the court that they should be released before their parole date, and judges have granted close to 60 percent of the requests, officials said.
About 24 percent of Philadelphia’s jail population is awaiting trial, a drop from 30 percent a year ago. “The people that are no longer in our prison population are all vetted,” Kenney said. “They simply could not make bail. We wound up paying $160 a day or so keeping them locked up. Many of the people on our system are in there for something drug-related. We need to get them to the proper treatment or job training, and they can’t do that sitting in jail watching TV or walking around in a yard. You can keep track of people through the probation office.”
The reduced prison population will soon mean reduced prison costs, Philadelphia Prisons Commissioner Blanche Carney said. “It’ll begin to impact our overtime costs,” Carney said, and eventually the hiring rate for a uniformed staff of more than 2,300 should slow.
And the smaller inmate population will improve opportunities for rehabilitative and retraining programs, Carney said. “We were so limited in rehabilitation space,” she said. “Now you can expose these inmates to the programs and services intended to bring about cognitive change.”
Making all these reforms meant bringing in parties who often have different agendas, meaning cops and judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers, and getting their goals aligned. “Often the problem is we don’t look at it as systems reform,” Garduque said. “We look at it as one decision-maker at a time, and you don’t get buy-in from somebody.” When everyone buys in and the system begins to respond more thoughtfully, Garduque said, “there’s more public confidence and legitimacy, and families and communities are all better off.”
