CREATORS: Jails and Prisons Responsible for Brunt of Mental Health Care

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
September 9, 2025

Milton Dusky was 33 years old and suffering from Schizophrenia. He was experiencing visual hallucinations, depression and alcoholism. He was under the influence of alcohol and drugs when he accompanied two teenage boys across state lines and raped a young girl.

He was arrested and charged with a federal crime. He had an evaluation that found he was "oriented to time, place, and person," and competent to stand trial. In 1958, he was convicted and appealed.

In 1960, Dusky's case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The High Court made a significant ruling regarding competency to stand trial. The court moved away from an analysis that considered whether an accused is "oriented to time and place and (has) some recollection of events" to a finding that an accused has "sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding — and whether he has a rational as well as factual understanding of the proceeding against him."

Competency is often confused with insanity. Competency is a determination of whether an accused can be tried for a crime. Insanity is a determination of whether an accused is responsible for a crime.

The M'Naghten Rule is the legal standard to determine a defendant's legal insanity and criminal responsibility at the time an offense was committed. It is not a clinical assessment of a person's basic awareness. It asks two central questions, based on the defendant's mental state at the time of the crime:

— Did the defendant know the nature and quality of the act they were doing?

— If they did, did they know that what they were doing was wrong?

Although the standards for competency and insanity are different, the impact on the accused can often be very similar and equally troubling. The Marshall Project recently examined what happens to an accused who is suspected of being incompetent. Some people can languish in jail for months and months waiting for a competency evaluation.

As The Marshall Project pointed out, "In the most severe cases, a court can issue a permanent finding of incompetence. Numerous states have long backlogs of criminal defendants waiting for 'competency restoration' before they can be tried in court."

Competency restoration is a term of art in the criminal justice system. An accused who is deemed incompetent is entitled to treatment that can stabilize the individual and enable that person, with medication and therapy, to aid in their defense and stand trial. Ideally, the treatment is provided at a forensic hospital. Unfortunately, those beds are scarce in most states, and individuals suffering from mental illness stay in jail until a bed is available.

One of the states with a waitlist for competency restoration is Pennsylvania. According to an investigation by Spotlight PA, "The (Pennsylvania) Department of Corrections and county jails have unintentionally become the largest providers of behavioral health services in the Commonwealth and are not sufficiently prepared and resourced to meet this population's needs."

To back up the findings, Spotlight PA teamed up with PrimeCare, a private contractor that provides healthcare to 37 jails across Pennsylvania, and the Lehigh Valley Justice Institute to review 10 years of mental healthcare data.

An analysis found that more than 60% of inmates screened for mental health problems needed services while incarcerated.

The nationwide shift away from civil commitment treatment beds toward forensic treatment is a huge part of the problem, Jerri Clark, a research and advocacy manager for the Treatment Advocacy Center, told The Marshal Project. "Punishment is never going to magically create insight for someone who is deeply unwell," Clark said. "You cannot punish someone out of their delusional thinking."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino 

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American prisons are fast becoming the world’s worst nursing homes

 German Lopez writing in The New York Times:

American prisons are fast becoming the world’s worst nursing homes, increasingly filled with aging criminals who can barely walk, let alone commit another crime. The idea that we should lock up people for life, even through old age, is often framed as being tough on crime. In reality, it gives years, if not decades, of shelter, food and health care to convicted criminals and redirects money from programs we know do a better job of protecting the public.

Older people are much less likely to commit crime than the young. They are also much more expensive to lock up. Federal prisons with the largest share of older prisoners spend five times as much per person on medical care and 14 times as much on medications as other facilities, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit advocacy group.

States and counties, which oversee a vast majority of people in prison, cannot run deficits for long or print money, as the federal government can. Every buck that pays for one thing means a dollar less for another. Funds spent on locking up an old inmate could have helped pay for more police officers or other anti-crime initiatives or schools or roads or any of the myriad other demands on local governments.

I have reported on criminal justice issues for more than a decade. If I have learned anything, it’s that crime policy is all about trade-offs, more so than in most other areas. Releasing more old people from prison, however, is close to a free lunch. Not only could it save money, but if the savings are wisely reinvested, it also could improve public safety.

America is heading in the opposite direction. Over the past three decades, the share of prisoners who are 55 or older has multiplied fivefold. Two trends have accelerated the phenomenon: First, young people are committing far less crime, so they are less likely to fill up prisons. Second, tough-on-crime trends led to more life sentences and other long prison penalties, and time is now taking its toll.

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The age-crime curve is the least-appreciated fact of criminal justice. If you chart a man’s likelihood to commit crime over his life, the line will hover near zero until he reaches his teens. Then his chance of committing a crime spikes, almost vertically, over the next decade. Nothing is more dangerous, in terms of crime, than a young man in his late teens or early 20s. But starting around his mid-20s, the line starts to drop. This continues for the rest of a typical man’s life. By the time he’s in his 50s, he is less likely to commit crime than he was as a young teenager.

Those trends are true for the general public. Do they apply to convicted criminals? Yes. One federal study tracked prison inmates after their release in 34 states. Nearly 57 percent of ex-inmates 24 or younger ended up back in prison within five years. Fewer than 15 percent of those 65 or older did. In other words, a vast majority of older inmates don’t reoffend.

On some level, we all recognize this. We know the brain doesn’t finish developing until a person’s mid-20s. Physicality matters, too. As a teenager, I could fall out of a tree, get back up and sprint after my friends without feeling a thing. Now, in my mid-30s, I feel my back hurting for days if I make a wrong turn picking up my cat. Crime follows the same facts of life. The kind of poor judgment that leads someone to commit more crime is more common among the young, and so is the physical ability to make good on that poor judgment.

Outliers do exist. But a vast majority of killers are not serial killers, and a vast majority of criminals are not lifelong offenders. Many criminals, maybe even most, committed a crime under the particular circumstances of their age and the moment. Keeping criminals locked up when they’re young absolutely can stop crime. Older inmates, however, pose little threat to the rest of us.

Supporters of the status quo raise two counterarguments: First, people who commit heinous crimes deserve to remain in prison, no matter their age, to demonstrate society’s moral condemnation. Second, long prison sentences, including those that last through old age and death, are good because they deter others from committing crimes.

The first counterargument is about values. I would argue that criminal justice policies should prioritize protecting the public over retribution. We don’t need to turn prisons into nursing homes to show our disapproval of a crime; decades-long prison sentences do a good enough job. But reasonable people can disagree.

The second counterargument, however, is simply wrong. A thorough review of the research found that longer prison sentences’ deterrence effect is “mild or zero.” As part of his analysis, the researcher, David Roodman, tried to replicate prominent studies that claimed evidence of long sentences deterring criminals. He found they contained serious problems that skewed their conclusions. All told, threatening to lock up people until their late 50s, 60s and beyond does little for public safety.

Lawmakers should address this problem with available policies: Governors should issue pardons for older inmates. Parole boards should put more weight on age. Officials should more aggressively use compassionate release laws that on a limited basis let out inmates who are ill. But lawmakers should go further. They should enact laws that require courts to revisit sentences after, say, 20 years. They should grant inmates the presumption of parole in more cases, meaning a parole board would keep a person locked up only with good reason. Broader reform should reduce the use of longer sentences in general.

Some caution is warranted. People deemed dangerous — the criminal justice system has ways of gauging that risk — should not be let out. Policies might exclude certain kinds of crimes.

With the savings from releases, lawmakers could pay for more effective approaches to public safety. Experts often say the United States is overincarcerated and underpoliced, particularly for violent crime. Police departments across the country have reported serious staffing shortages for years, and we know that having fewer officers around leads to more crime. These shortages are one reason nearly half of America’s murderers now get away with it.

You don’t have to mourn an older killer’s lifelong suffering in prison to think reform is a good idea. You can just think, as I do, that the criminal justice system should protect Americans as efficiently and effectively as possible. Paying for the housing, food and health care of someone unlikely to commit a crime should not make the cut.

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Incompetent Missourian inmates wait up to 14 months for mental health treatment

In Missouri some people who are arrested and found incompetent to stand trial are ordered into mental health treatment designed to allow them to have their day in court — a process called competency restoration that generally includes therapy and medication.

However, the average time these individuals wait in jail before receiving treatment is 14 months, according to the Missouri Independent.

Efforts to remedy the problem in the 2023 legislative session, including through a pilot program and increasing outpatient competency restoration, have been slow to get off the ground. 

Greene County, which was included in the pilot program, decided not to participate. Clay County’s program was in operation for just three weeks last year before staff turnover put it on pause. 

Only three people are currently enrolled in the jail-based treatment pilot program statewide, according to Debra Walker, a spokesperson for the state's Department of Mental Health. And only one person is currently in the outpatient treatment program.

Walker said the agency is working on solutions but “none of them will impact the numbers quickly.”

Last year, Department of Mental Health Director Valerie Huhn told the House budget committee the problem would get much worse before it gets better. 

“It’s probably going to be 1,000 individuals,” Huhn said, “long before we’re at 100 individuals.”

‘Deprives them of humanity’   

Mary Fox, the director of the Missouri State Public Defender system, said the wait times for mental health treatment are the worst she’s seen. She has been going to courthouses throughout the state trying to get some of the cases dismissed.

Public defenders have identified at least 12 cases of individuals in Missouri being held longer than their maximum sentences would have been, Fox said, without receiving competency restoration.

“It's gotten so bad that people aren't getting any treatment within the time period of when their case should be over and done with,” Fox said.

One client was having paranoid delusions and called the police himself, convinced he was being watched. The police then arrested him because his license plate was expired and because he didn’t stop driving when they put on their lights. 

Fox said he’s waited in jail for longer than he would’ve for the maximum sentence on those two charges.

In a recent case filing, Fox called detention beyond the maximum sentence “unconstitutional, illegal and improper.”

Walker said the agency is “aware of such circumstances.”

“Individuals are admitted in the order in which the court order is received, and admissions are triaged based upon clinical acuity,” she said, adding that DMH is also working to provide medication and case management to individuals while in jail, through mobile teams of clinicians.

While individuals wait in jail, their mental health often deteriorates, said Annie Legomsky, who runs the state public defense system’s holistic defense services program. 

Many are placed in solitary confinement, isolated for 23 or 24 hours a day, she said, and can end up with irreparable damage.

“It just completely deprives them of humanity, and it’s the antithesis of anything you could call a therapeutic environment,” she said. “We see clients who do just really sad things like eating their own feces, having suicidal ideation and actions, who are just completely decompensating.”

And there isn’t anything those individuals can do: Their case is on hold until they’re restored to competency to stand trial, so they can’t get released after they’ve waited the maximum sentence.

“They can't do anything to, kind of, control their fate,” Legomsky said. “They're at the mercy of (the Department of Mental Health) getting them the treatment they need.” 

In states including Oklahoma, Kansas, and Washington, lawsuits filed by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union over similar wait times have succeeded, arguing the practice violates individuals’ rights to due process and the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

So far, similar litigation hasn’t been filed in Missouri. A spokesperson for the ACLU of Missouri declined to comment. 

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Bail reform fails in Baltimore--people in jail awaiting trial increases

Seven years after Maryland tried to reform the cash bail system because of its disproportionate impact on the state’s poorest residents, people who get arrested in Baltimore are being held in jail before trial at a higher rate than before the change, reported the Baltimore Beat.

While the use of cash bail has dropped since the bail reform effort, nearly two-thirds of all initial appearances in Baltimore — the first hearing an arrested person has before a court official — now end in a bail denial, a rate that has surged by about 300% since the state judiciary changed the rules surrounding pretrial release in 2017.

The population at Baltimore’s main pretrial detention center has actually risen since 2017, even as arrests have declined during the same period. People who are held in jail before trial can wait months or longer before their case concludes, even though they are presumed innocent and criminal cases in Baltimore often end without a conviction.

The biggest shift since the rule change has come from court officers denying bail entirely, according to data provided by the state judiciary and analyzed by Baltimore Beat and The Garrison Project.

The data shows: 

·         Since the bail reform rule change in 2017, the use of cash bail at initial appearances has fallen dramatically in Baltimore, from about 40% before the 2017 effort to under 5% in the first half of 2023, the most recent data provided by the state judiciary.

·         Baltimore’s overall release rate — the proportion of people freed on unsecured bond or on their own recognizance at their initial appearances — rose at first after bail reform, but then fell back below pre-reform levels.

·         In 2016, court officers in Baltimore held people without bail at their initial appearances less than 15% of the time, but bail denials quickly spiked after the rule change and have hovered around 60% since 2020.

These are not brief stints in jail. More than 60% of defendants who have an initial appearance are still in custody five days later.

The 2017 bail reform effort was designed to reduce the crushing, unequal costs of cash bail and stop judges from holding people in jail pretrial simply because they could not afford to pay — a practice that was likely unconstitutional, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office said in 2016.

Yet the population at Baltimore’s main pretrial detention center has risen from under 700 people per day on average in 2017 to more than 900 in 2023. The facility’s health care system is under intense scrutiny, and at least four people have died in pretrial custody this year, including a man who was held on $3,500 cash bail after being accused of stealing snacks from a vending machine.

Christopher Dews, a lobbyist who represents Out for Justice, a nonprofit that supports formerly incarcerated people, said the difference after the 2017 rule change was clear when he worked on the Job Opportunity Task Force’s bail fund in Baltimore. The number of people eligible to be bailed out of jail dwindled and then reached zero, he said.

The result has frustrated reform advocates who considered the rule change a victory but have since watched it backfire.

“It is quite painful, the reality that whenever we have a massive policy win for equitable criminal justice reforms, it does seem as if the state finds non-legislative, non-policy ways to thwart those successes,” Dews said. “As advocates, we prepare to defend our wins, but you can only defend wins so much from the state that has to implement those same wins.”

The pretrial system became more black-and-white after the rule change, added Nicole Belle, who was a case manager for the Job Opportunity Task Force’s bail fund from 2021 until early 2023. People facing charges were either released or held without bail.

“There was no in between,” Belle said.  

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Louisiana locks up 17-year-olds to fight violence--it's not working

In Louisiana policy makers believed the only way to stop violent teenagers was to prosecute all 17-year-olds in adult court, regardless of the offense, and lock them up in prison, reported Verite News and ProPublica. Law enforcement officials from around the state made similar arguments. Legislators quickly passed a bill that lowered the age at which the justice system must treat defendants as adults from 18 to 17. 

But according to a review of arrests in the five months since the law took effect, most of the 17-year-olds booked in three of the state’s largest parishes have not been accused of violent crimes. Verite News and ProPublica identified 203 17-year-olds who were arrested in Orleans, Jefferson and East Baton Rouge parishes between April and September. A total of 141, or 69%, were arrested for offenses that are not listed as violent crimes in Louisiana law, according to our analysis of jail rosters, court records and district attorney data. 

Just 13% of the defendants — a little over two dozen — have been accused of the sort of violent crimes that lawmakers cited when arguing for the legislation, such as rape, armed robbery and murder. Prosecutors were able to move such cases to adult court even before the law was changed. 

The larger group of lesser offenses includes damaging property, trespassing, theft under $1,000, disturbing the peace, marijuana possession, illegal carrying of weapons and burglary. They also include offenses that involve the use of force, such as simple battery, but those are not listed in state law as violent crimes either, and they can be prosecuted as misdemeanors depending on the circumstances. 

In one case in New Orleans, a boy took a car belonging to his mother’s boyfriend without permission so he could check out flooding during Hurricane Francine last month, according to a police report. When the teen returned the car, the front bumper was damaged. The boyfriend called police and the teen was arrested for unauthorized use of a vehicle. In another case, a boy was charged with battery after he got into a fight with his brother about missing a school bus.

In July, a 17-year-old girl was charged with resisting arrest and interfering with a law enforcement investigation. She had shoved a police officer as he was taking her older sister into custody for a minor charge resulting from a fight with another girl. None of those defendants have had an opportunity to enter a plea so far; convictions could result in jail or prison time of up to two years. 

In juvenile court, teenagers facing charges such as these could be sentenced to a detention facility, but the juvenile system is mandated to focus on rehabilitation and sentences are generally shorter than in adult court, juvenile justice advocates said. And in the juvenile system, only arrests for violent crimes and repeat offenses are public record. But because these 17-year-olds are in the adult system, they all have public arrest records that can prevent them from getting jobs or housing.

Rachel Gassert, the former policy director for the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, said there was one word to describe what she felt when Verite News and ProPublica shared their findings: “Despair.”

Eight years ago, Gassert and other criminal justice advocates convinced lawmakers to raise the age for adult prosecution from 17 to 18 years old, pointing to research that shows that the human brain does not fully develop until early adulthood and that youth are more likely to reoffend when they are prosecuted as adults. The law enacted this spring was the culmination of a two-year effort to reverse that. 

“The whole push to repeal Raise the Age was entirely political and all about throwing children under the bus,” Gassert said. “And now we are seeing the tire treads on their backs.”

Gov. Jeff Landry’s office, Clayton and state Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, who sponsored the bill to roll back Raise the Age, did not respond to requests for comment. The Louisiana District Attorneys Association, which supported the bill, declined to comment.  

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Creators: Diddy Sits in Jail Pending Trial

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
September 30, 2024

Why is Sean "Diddy" Combs in jail? He hasn't been convicted of a crime. He was charged by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York with conspiracy to commit racketeering, conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. How about the presumption of innocence?

Pretrial detention in federal court is much different than in the various states. In state court, typically after a felony arrest, an arraignment hearing is scheduled. At the hearing, a judge sets a monetary amount for bond. The accused can post a cash bond or use a surety to post bail. The accused is then free pending trial. There is no such system in federal cases.

In federal court, pursuant to the Bail Reform Act of 1984, an accused has a presumption of release pending trial. Federal prosecutors must overcome that presumption. The presumption is overcome by proving that an accused is a flight risk — the fear that an accused will run before trial.

This is where it gets dicey for Combs. The court will consider a person's access to funds and ease of travel. Someone like Combs, with substantial wealth, is more likely to be detained because of access to quick cash, making it easier to flee.

Another problem for Combs was his alleged contact with witnesses prior to the indictment. Federal prosecutors can present evidence that the accused poses a danger to the community, such as a history of violence or threats to witnesses.

If a judge finds that the accused is either a risk to flee or dangerous, she may order the accused remain in custody until trial.

According to The New York Times, during Combs' detention hearing, prosecutors presented evidence that Combs had committed violence against women, had access to weapons, had a history of anger management and substance abuse, and had contacted some of the victims, and witnesses, who reported being afraid of him.

A federal magistrate and a federal district court judge have decided to detain Combs pending trial.

Combs is a victim of his own wealth and notoriety.

In a state cash bail system, a judge sets a sum based on factors like the seriousness of the offense and the accused's criminal record. If the accused doesn't have the money, she sits in jail until trial. Many of those charged with a crime in state court remain in jail simply because of their inability to post bond.

In contrast, federal law requires the judge to conduct an extensive hearing and consider a variety of factors in deciding whether to release a defendant before trial. If released, the accused pays nothing up front to be released — only a promise to pay a certain sum of money in the future if the defendant fails to appear for trial. The advantage of the federal system over the state cash bail system is that a defendant's freedom is not determined by their ability to pay.

In March, federal Homeland Security agents raided Combs' residences in Los Angeles and Miami as part of an investigation into alleged criminal activity.

According to news accounts, a recent indictment against Combs alleges arson, kidnapping, forced labor, bribery, obstruction of justice, prostitution and sex trafficking, including forcing victims into engaging in recorded sexual activity referred to as "Freak Offs."

For Combs, money is the problem. Not that he doesn't have enough, but that he has too much. Theoretically, it would be easy for someone with Combs' resources to be released, call a friend with some connections, charter a private jet — without a flight plan — and flee the country.

Ironically, a federal statute created to eliminate wealth as a factor for release is keeping Combs in jail.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on X @MatthewTMangino

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'What is wrong with our country?'

Mother jailed for contempt for ignoring family reunification therapy with husband who allegedly abused children

Across Colorado, children are in danger because of forced family reunification therapy. The process, meant to rebuild a parent-child relationship strained by separation or divorce, can be mandated by a family judge even when the child has accused a parent of abuse, reported The Washington Post.

That was the case for Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins, who was joined by dozens of people — mostly mothers — urging Colorado courts to reevaluate how they handle child custody rulings, particularly family reunification therapy.

The 48-year-old mother of six made headlines last week when she was jailed for contempt after opposing family reunification for her two youngest sons and their father, a former police sergeant who was charged July 29 with sexually assaulting three of their daughters and physically abusing one son.

Christopher Estoll, an attorney for Michael Hawkins, 55, did not immediately respond to request for comment but has previously denied the accusations on his client’s behalf. In an Aug. 1 court filing, Estoll said the accusations were “not supported by evidence” and characterized Pickrel-Hawkins as a “not credible” witness who manipulated the couple’s children.

Hawkins, an Aurora, Colo., officer who in 2012 was hailed among the first responders to the deadly movie theater shooting in Aurora, remains free on bond with ankle monitoring. Pickrel-Hawkins, meanwhile, must report to weekend jail for seven weeks.

During Thursday’s rally outside the state Supreme Court, Pickrel-Hawkins said parents like her who are mired in custody battles following relationships marked by alleged domestic violence are silenced — “by gag orders, by going to jail, silenced to say anything else or they’ll get less time with their children.”

“What is wrong with our country?” Pickrel-Hawkins asked the crowd. “What is wrong with our state?”

Since 2010, 30 children have been killed by abusive parents, with eight of those deaths coming in 2023 alone, Colorado state Rep. Meg Froelich (D) said in a letter sent this week to Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice Monica Márquez. Froelich said she hopes the letter, signed by a mix of Colorado lawmakers and child-safety advocates, will prompt the new chief justice to push the state’s family courts to embrace changes that include ensuring family court judges and family reunification counselors are trained to understand domestic violence and trauma.

Crucially, Froelich said, children must be given a voice in the courtroom and should be allowed to address a judge during custody hearings without the parents present. The current system prioritizes the wishes of a parent who wants to reconnect with their child over the child’s preferences or stated safety concerns, Froelich said.

Under Colorado’s embattled family court system, some reunification therapy counselors have pressured children to reconcile with the parent who abused them — something that would never be asked of victims in other scenarios, Froelich said.

“Since when is the twist of fate that you’re biologically linked mean that you should move toward reconciliation and forgiveness?” Froelich said following the rally. “We’d never say that to a sexual assault survivor. But [Pickrel-Hawkins’s] children were told to go to their father and forgive him.”

According to an affidavit for Hawkins’s arrest, allegations of his abuse stretch back nearly two decades and include claims that Hawkins repeatedly raped his daughter and sexually abused his adopted daughters from Pickrel-Hawkins’s previous relationship, groping them beneath their underwear. He is also accused of using police restraint tactics on the children and forcing his children to witness or participate in animal cruelty.

Colorado’s legislature has enacted some family court restructuring in recent years, including a bill passed last year that restricts the use of family reunification camps, or situations that isolate a child from their preferred or bonded parent to improve their relationship with an estranged parent.

Still, Froelich said Pickrel-Hawkins’s situation proves more changes are needed. Fighting the custody arrangements has put Pickrel-Hawkins deeply in debt and forced her to live in a domestic violence shelter with her two youngest children.

Pickrel-Hawkins told The Washington Post through a representative that she hoped sustained attention would remain on her case and others like it, and that the news media would “thoroughly investigate, stand up, and speak for those who have been wrongfully silenced and punished for protecting the innocent children that desperately need our protection most.”

Pickrel-Hawkins declined a phone interview Friday afternoon, indicating she would be spending the last hours of the day with her children before returning to jail.

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NYC will pay $28 million to young mentally ill inmate who tried to hang himself

New York City has agreed to pay more than $28 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of Nicholas Feliciano, who suffered severe brain damage after he attempted to hang himself in a Rikers Island jail cell as more than half a dozen correction officers stood by, reported The New York Times.

If approved by a judge, it will be among the largest pretrial settlements ever to be awarded to a single plaintiff in a civil rights case in New York City.

Mr. Feliciano was 18 and had a long history of psychiatric hospitalizations and suicide attempts when he was sent to Rikers in late 2019 on a parole violation. When he tried to hang himself on Nov. 27 of that year, guards watched as he flailed his arms but did not intervene even after he became limp, video footage obtained by The New York Times shows.

The Bronx district attorney filed felony charges against three of the guards and a captain in 2022. Last year, two of the guards pleaded guilty to official misconduct, a misdemeanor, and avoided jail time. The cases against the captain and the remaining officer are pending.

For the past four years, Mr. Feliciano has received round-the-clock care, first at the Bellevue Hospital Center and then at a rehabilitation facility where he must use a walker to get around, said his grandmother, Madeline Feliciano, 57. He cannot eat without assistance, has short-term memory loss and struggles to remember visits with family and friends or the things he did the day before, she said.

The proposed settlement, Ms. Feliciano said, will help his family care for him at home. A final decision in the case could come as early as next week.

“It is not going to bring Nicholas back to who he was,” she said, adding that, at 22, “he has to live with this injury for rest of his life.”

A Correction Department spokeswoman said the agency has taken steps to reduce self-harm among detainees through renovations to housing areas, including the installation of fencing around units with multiple floors. She said officers are trained to prevent suicides and recognize signs of distress among mentally ill detainees and that specialists are assigned to people who have a history of trying to harm themselves.

But the New York City Board of Correction, a jails oversight panel, said in a recent report that many of the problems that had given rise to Mr. Feliciano’s case have only worsened.

Over the past three years, at least 18 mentally ill detainees have killed themselves or died of drug overdoses or other causes, records and interviews show. And the number of detainees with psychiatric needs has risen: About one in five people held on Rikers has some form of serious mental illness.

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Texas continues to use a cash bail system-penalizing poor people

Like most states, Texas uses a cash bail system that lets defendants pay to get released from jail while they wait for ​​adjudication. But the price of bail is often an insurmountable hurdle, reported the Texas Tribune.

Civil rights groups and inmates have unsuccessfully challenged Texas’ use of a cash bail system for years. Lawsuits targeting Dallas and Harris county jails alleged the practice was unconstitutional because it discriminates against poorer defendants. A federal appeals court ruled against the Dallas plaintiffs and the Supreme Court declined to take the case. 

In 2021, Texas lawmakers changed the state’s bail system, but didn’t forbid a cash bail system. Instead, they required all defendants accused of violent crimes to pay cash for release from jail before their trials. Critics said requiring cash to get out of jail would continue to penalize low-income people and benefit the bail bonds industry.

About three in every four Texans in county jails are awaiting the resolution of their cases, according to data from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, the state agency that oversees local jails. That number has surpassed pre-pandemic levels and is 14% higher than in January 2017.

For women, the wait can be harder than for men. County jails, meant for short stays, commonly lack resources women need — like pregnancy care and mental health treatment. Women in county jails are also more likely to have mental health needs. And many are mothers separated from their children.

Angel Collier worked at Buc-ee’s, but in 2014 became a stay-at-home mom for several years before breaking up with her child’s father. At the time of her 2020 arrest, Collier was living with her father while she was a full-time student pursuing an online psychology degree from Houston Christian University.

Following her arrest, Collier’s combined bond for the two misdemeanor charges was set at $8,000. When she couldn’t afford that, a friend loaned her over $700 to pay a bonds company so she could get out of jail. But two years later, while still awaiting her trial, she missed a required court hearing because she was receiving emergency care for pregnancy complications. A warrant was issued for her arrest in Walker County.

In June 2022, officers from Madison County were sent to her home in Midway for a welfare check because someone reported she was having a miscarriage. When Collier came outside, she told police she was OK, but that she may go to the doctor the next day, according to video obtained by KFF Health News. Because of the Walker County warrants, police arrested her.

Collier said she could not afford to pay thousands of dollars to bail out. Stuck in Walker County jail again, she says she experienced a miscarriage and received little medical attention while she waited a day for another friend to loan her money to pay a bonds company for her release.

Collier later filed a formal complaint with The Texas Commission on Jail Standards about her miscarriage. In a September 2022 letter, the agency told Collier that Walker County Jail had not violated minimum jail standards. According to the commission, records from Walker County Jail show that Collier only submitted one medical request and did not advise jail staff of any other medical issues. Collier claims she asked for help multiple times.

“We haven’t yet gone far enough to meet the needs of women who are in jail at the county level,” said Alycia Welch, associate director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at The University of Texas at Austin, a research center dedicated to incarceration in Texas.

Texas law requires the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to collect and report data on incarcerated women. But the Commission cannot provide the total number of women behind bars and waiting for their cases to be resolved in Texas county jails right now — or any time in the last two years.

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Cash bail is a sanction for poverty

On any given day, approximately 514,000 people are held in local jails across the United States. Though defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty, more than 80% of the jail population are awaiting trial and have yet to be convicted of a crime, reported the Reason Foundation. Defendants accused of particularly serious violent crimes or who pose a credible threat to public safety may be detained in jail while awaiting trial. However, most defendants are entitled to pretrial release. Judges may impose conditions on a defendant’s release, such as electronic monitoring or supervision through a pretrial services agency.

Monetary release conditions, commonly referred to as “cash bail” or “money bail,” are among the most common types of pretrial release conditions in the United States. Cash bail allows defendants to secure their release by depositing a specified amount of money with the court as collateral, providing a financial incentive for compliance during the pretrial phase. If a defendant appears as required through the disposition of their case, the bail amount is returned to them. If a defendant fails to appear in court as required, the bail amount is forfeited, and the defendant may face additional criminal charges or penalties.

Cash bail was historically intended to provide a financial incentive for defendants to show up at required court dates, but reforms adopted in the 1970s and 1980s allow judges to also consider potential risks to public safety when making bail decisions. Under the right circumstances, cash bail is an appropriate tool for ensuring defendants cooperate throughout the pretrial period. However, many defendants cannot afford the cost of bail and are consequently detained for no reason other than their inability to pay.

Recent research suggests that bail decisions can result in defendants losing their jobs, coerce defendants into accepting plea bargains, and increase the probability that defendants are convicted. Given the potential negative consequences of pretrial detention resulting from an inability to afford cash bail, reform advocates have suggested limiting the use of monetary release conditions. Reforms to pretrial policy require policymakers to balance several competing interests, many of which are difficult to quantify. For example, it is not possible to quantify the normative value of the presumption of innocence or American’s Constitutional right to reasonable bail. However, research evidence can shed some light on the efficacy of cash bail for ensuring compliance during the pretrial period.

With some caveats, the studies included in this review collectively suggest that monetary release conditions like cash bail do not consistently improve court attendance and may not result in net crime reduction. Other factors, including indigence, drug use disorders, and criminal history, are generally stronger predictors of court attendance than the imposition of monetary release conditions. Conservatively, we can conclude that the United States relies too heavily on monetary release conditions. The bulk of available evidence suggests that curtailing the use of monetary release conditions among low-risk defendants would not result in dramatic drops in court attendance or increased risk of reoffending. There is even some evidence that pretrial reforms that reduce detention of low-risk, bond-eligible defendants may actually improve public safety. Additional research is needed to evaluate more ambitious reform proposals.

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High profile escapes get Pennsylvania legislature moving on jail security

Rep. Kathy Rapp, who represents Warren and Forest counties, said the Warren escape is just one recent example of why jail safety and infrastructure need to be addressed, reported WESA-FM in Pittsburgh. Two inmates also escaped from the Philadelphia correctional facility in May. Danelo Cavalcante, who escaped from Chester County jail almost two weeks ago, was taken into custody early Wednesday.

“The bills are really to tighten up and look at what's going on in our jails that we need to take a good look at and make them safer so that our communities are safer," Rapp said, "especially when we see escapees breaking out of our county jails and striking fear into the hearts of our constituents.”

Rapp plans to introduce a bill that would remove the chance of parole for inmates that try to escape.

“Since they're escapees, we know they want to get out of jail, right? So if they know that they're not going to have a chance then with parole, hopefully that will disincentivize an escape,” Rapp said.

Other bills in this package would provide jail infrastructure funding, allow county jails to hire off-duty corrections officers from other counties and state corrections officers, create an alert system for prison escapes, and require a security audit of county jails that experienced an escape.

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Home confinement is safer, more effective, than incarceration

The evidence is clear: home confinement is much safer, and more effective, than prison incarceration, writes Billy Sinclair for The Crime Report. 

Home confinement is not a release “back on the streets” to roam free. The offender is required to wear an ankle monitor to ensure presence in the home just as they would undergo “count procedures” to ensure their presence in prison or jail cells; they must secure permission to leave their homes for reasons such as work or medical appointments just as they would have to do in jail or prison; and they must remain crime and drug free just as they would have to do in general prison population in order to avoid disciplinary lockdown.

Ms. Gill concluded her Post piece with these conclusions:

“The federal Cares Act home confinement program should inspire similar programs across the country. Virtually all states have programs available to release elderly or very sick people from prison, but they are hardly used and should be expanded. States should also give people serving the longest sentences a chance to go back to court after 10 or 15 years and prove that they have changed and can be safely released.” 

“The data is in. It shows that we can thoughtfully release low-risk people from prison with supervision and not cause a new crime wave. At a time when crime is going up in so many cities and towns, we cannot afford to waste money or resources keeping those who no longer need to be in prison locked up.”

The same Cares Act home confinement model could be applied to prison and especially jail systems throughout the nation. 

On any given day, there are anywhere from 500,000 to 550,000 people the nation’s jail systems—roughly half of whom would qualify for a Cares Act type home confinement.

These are offenders who have been arrested for low level drug, minor property, and other non-violent offenses. 

Most counties, particularly in larger urban areas, already have in place local government departments that coordinate and monitor community supervision with hundreds of employees.

These departments have the resources and skills necessary to handle additional hundreds, if not thousands, of jail detainees who could be released from jail detention to home confinement without posing any measurable risk to public safety. 

The costs savings to taxpayers would be staggering—not to mention that home confinement could free up dozens of jail staffers to be re-deployed to street patrols where they could better protect and serve the community.

Jails are considered the “front door” into the nation’s criminal justice system.  

More than 10.3 million people pass through these doors each year. Black and low-income people disproportionately make up the number of people arrested and placed in jail systems where they are held because they cannot make bail. 

It is an insane system: the dangerous offender with money is released from jail detention because they can afford bail while the non-dangerous offender remains in jail detention because they cannot post bail, even minimal amounts

The fix to this recurring racial/income inequity would be to treat non-dangerous jail detainees as the BOP did with its non-dangerous prison inmates under the Cares Act home confinement model. 

The BOP learned that most non-dangerous offenders have homes and family support systems. The same is true for jail detainees whose community support structures allow for successful home confinement pending a resolution of their pretrial court proceedings.

 It serves no legitimate criminal justice interests to keep non-dangerous individuals packed in overcrowded and unsafe jails pending trial when successful home confinement programs are available.

While the data is not completely clear, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, about the correlation of pretrial detention versus violent crime rates, it is clear that a small percentage of non-dangerous jail detainees placed in home confinement would reoffend but the number that would commit violent crimes would be minuscule as evidenced by those released under the Cares Act home confinement program. 

One other thing that can be said with more than a fair amount of certainty is that brutal pretrial detention influences far more individuals to reoffend than would home confinement.

That certainty underscores the reality that pretrial jail detention is more harmful to public safety than home confinement.

We suggest that mayor’s offices, district attorney’s offices, and local law enforcement agencies get together, just as the DOJ and the BOP did during the height of the COVID pandemic, and develop meaningful home confinement programs to replace the arbitrary and unfair jail detention practices currently in place.

The evidence is compelling that the general public would be better served, through taxpayer savings and enhanced public safety, if local officials transitioned from pretrial jail detention to home confinement.

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Oklahoma jail guard permitted white supremacists to beat black prisoners

In April, a federal jury convicted 53-year-old Matthew Ware, an Oklahoma prison guard, for allowing Black inmates, being detained pre-trial, to be attacked by white supremacists, which violated the civil rights of three inmates, reports KOCO-TV.

Ware was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release, a news release states.

"This defendant is being held accountable for abusing his position of power and authority to, among other things, facilitate an attack carried out by white supremacists on a Black inmate," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in the news release. "This sentence handed down reflects the seriousness of the defendant’s actions and ensures accountability for his unlawful conduct. The Justice Department will continue to hold corrections officials accountable, including those in leadership positions, when they willfully violate the constitutional rights of detainees and inmates in their custody and control."

Prosecutors said Ware ordered another employee to move two Black inmates to a unit that had white supremacist inmates. Investigators said Ware knew the Black inmates would be in danger.

Ware also ordered the cells of the inmates to be unlocked, which led to a violent attack. A third inmate was restrained in a position with his arms extended for 90 minutes, which resulted in physical injury.

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New Jersey bail reform measure dramatically reduced minor offenders awaiting trial

 In 2014, New Jersey voters backed a constitutional amendment to allow judges to order certain criminal suspects be detained without bail and pushed the courts away from holding minor offenders awaiting trial, according to the New Jersey Monitor.

Since that measure went into effect in 2017, the number of individuals imprisoned on bail of $2,500 or less while awaiting trial fell to just 14 last year, the New Jersey Judiciary announced. A study conducted in 2012 put the number at more than 1,500, fully 12% of the state’s prison population.

“Based on what the hands-on experience is with the courts system, it’s proven out that we got it right,” said Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D-Gloucester), a prime sponsor of the amendment’s enabling legislation, which allowed the courts to set non-monetary release conditions.

The number of pretrial inmates held on bail of $2,500 or less has declined each year since the new rules went into effect. Replicated studies found such individuals accounted for 4.6% of New Jersey’s prison population in 2018, and 2.4% in 2019.

“If the point of it was to ensure that some of the tenets of American society — that you’re innocent until proven guilty and those people that are low societal risks are allowed to be out of jail — then it’s worked,” said Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D-Union), chair of the senate’s judiciary committee and another prime sponsor. “The data bears out that it’s working.”

The declines persisted even as widespread trial delays spurred by the pandemic pushed the number of incarcerated persons up slightly.

Scutari also credited the reforms with saving counties money that would have been used on corrections. Union County this summer transferred inmates held at its county jail in Elizabeth to the Essex County Correctional Facility. County officials expect the arrangement to save Union $103 million over the next five years.

Officials in Hudson County approved a similar agreement to share substance abuse treatment and re-entry services with Union. The Union County facility is still being used as an intake hub and for temporary detentions.

The reforms initially caused some consternation among judges, who voiced concerns over the impact of stricter trial deadlines, but — save for the delays caused by COVID-19 — those do not appear to have borne out.

“I remember the judges were going crazy. ‘It’s going to be crazy. It’s too much work,’” Scutari said. “But now they’ve gotten it done, just like I expected. We have an excellent judiciary. They got it done. They understand it now. It’s working, just as intended. Low-risk individuals are being allowed to await trial with their freedom, and we’re not jeopardizing people’s safety by putting high-risk people out there.”

The policy shift has not led to a rise in indictable offenses committed by individuals on pretrial release, the report says. That number has held steady at about 13.8% since 2017, and court appearance rates for such persons increased to 90.9% last year, from just under 90% in 2019.

The share of individuals incarcerated for serious offenses increased again, rising to 79.7%. It was 75.9% in 2019 and 74.9% in 2018.

“Too many people have ended up in jail not because they committed a serious crime, but because they can’t afford bail. That unfair system, which reigned in New Jersey for a century, unfairly punished the poor and working class,” Rep. Donald Norcross (D-01), who sponsored the bill as a state senator, said in a statement. “We have more to do to improve equity and abolish discrimination in our criminal justice system – but the annual criminal justice reform report shows we are on the right path.”

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Cleveland jail releases mentally ill inmate on winter night without coat or cellphone

Cuyahoga County Jail officials, in Cleveland, Ohio released Jose Irizarry, 40, in the middle of a cold and windy November night without a coat or his cellphone. Cleveland police believe he ended up in Lake Erie three hours later, and his body still hasn’t been found, according to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.

Cinthia Irizarry was glad when her older brother Jose called and said he was going to get released from the Cuyahoga County Jail. She knew firsthand about the jail’s poor conditions and what that might mean for someone like her brother, who lived with schizophrenia and bipolar personality disorder.

She was eager to bring him home, especially since jail staff told her that her brother exhibited some suicidal tendencies during his stay. Her brother also told her that medical officials there gave him medicine he did not recognize.

She waited for the call to pick him up, but it never came.

The experience left Cinthia Irizarry, 39, wondering what happened to her brother, especially after she found letters he wrote from his cell about the jail conditions, where the inadequate care of inmates with mental illness has led to several deaths and lawsuits in the last three years.

“It’s horrible,” Cinthia Irizarry said. “I can’t imagine. I wouldn’t treat an animal like this. How are you going to release him in the middle of the night like that?”

Many of the letters, written in Spanish, are incoherent. In some, he talked about how his time in jail left him feeling tortured. In others, he talked about dreaming about death.

“I had a dream they would kill me,” he wrote in one letter. In another, he said, “These nightmares about death [are] almost daily.”

Cuyahoga County spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan did not comment on Irizarry’s death, nor did officials respond to detailed questions about the circumstances surrounding his time in jail and his release.

Jail policy dictates that an in-custody jail death triggers investigations into what happened to correct any issues that led to the death. The county doesn’t consider Irizarry’s death a jail death, but jail administrators could, in theory, conduct a similar investigation.

Madigan would not say if the county will ever conduct a similar review of Irizarry’s time in jail before he disappeared.

A study conducted over two years published in January by Disability Rights Ohio advocacy group found that Cuyahoga County inmates with mental illnesses often struggle to gain access to treatment and medication, especially in the first few days after entering the jail.

Attorneys for the county and MetroHealth issued a 12-page rebuttal to the report that said DRO relied “on outdated and unsupported information” and that the report “will only serve to confuse stakeholders as to the actual current state of affairs” in the jail.

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New Jersey grants defendants new detention hearings due to COVID-19 delays

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled Thursday that defendants who are facing prolonged incarceration due to COVID-19 trial delays have the right to a new detention hearing if certain requirements are met, reported Jurist.   

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Jersey and the Office of the Public Defender brought this case. The New Jersey Supreme Court denied the lawsuit’s broad requests that (1) defendants charged with a second-degree offense or less be released if they have been detained for over six months; and (2) defendants charged with a first-degree offense be given a new detention hearing if they have been detained for over six months.

Rather than granting the blanket requests, the court unanimously ruled that defendants have the right to apply for a new detention hearing. The justices explained that the COVID-19 related trial delays constitute a “change of circumstance” under New Jersey statute law.

To reopen a detention hearing, the defendant must have been detained for at least six months. The defendant must also “present new information that was not known that the time of the initial hearing and that ‘has a material bearing’ on the release decision.” Materiality may be dependent on the individual defendant’s length of detention, the length of detention compared to the predicted length of incarceration, the defendant’s plea offer, the defendant’s health risks, and other factors.

Defendants who have been charged with murder or who face a potential life sentence will likely be ineligible to reopen detention hearings.

Regarding the court’s ruling, the ACLU-NJ Director of Supreme Court Advocacy Alexander Shalom said “we’re gratified that the court recognized a desperate need to address the crisis in the criminal courts precipitated by the pandemic.”

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Jail populations are on the rise, some back to pre-pandemic levels

Gordon Weekes, the chief public defender in Broward County, Florida, believed that March 2020 could have compelled the start of something different for the criminal legal system. The COVID-19 pandemic had just hit the U.S. Officials all over the nation needed to decide whether they would risk letting thousands of people contract a potentially fatal disease simply because they were incarcerated in overcrowded and unsanitary jails and prisons, reported The Appeal.

At first, he was hopeful. Local cops, prosecutors, and judges worked with defense attorneys to lower the jail population of Broward County, a region of nearly 2 million people that includes the cities of Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood. By last April, the jail population was less than 3,000 people for the first time in decades. But now, nearly one year later, COVID-19 is spreading at a higher rate, and the county jail population has instead risen once again. Weekes confirmed to The Appeal that, as of mid-January, nearly 3,500 people were being held.

“I was hoping that the pandemic would give people some real-life data to show the justice system, and the ways we’ve been doing things in the past, was inherently flawed,” Weekes told The Appeal. But, he added, “it seems like no one has learned anything from the last year when we’ve been addressing this issue. That is the great frustration you have with the system.”

That frustration is shared in cities around the nation. According to numerous news reports, as well as data obtained by The Appeal, the number of people held pretrial in many of America’s major cities rose during the latter half of 2020. In some cities, jail populations have now risen back to their pre-pandemic populations.

According to a review by The Appeal, jail populations in New York City, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Dallas, Miami, Broward County, Orlando, and Tampa declined briefly in early 2020 and have since returned to pre-pandemic levels. Other major cities that released some incarcerated people in early 2020, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Columbus, Ohio, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Boston, Indianapolis, Oakland, Denver, and Austin, Texas, have seen their jail populations swell over the latter half of 2020, but they remain somewhat lower than their pre-pandemic levels.

As of Tuesday, more than 452,000 incarcerated people and prison staff nationwide have been infected by the coronavirus, and nearly 2,400 have died.

“I thought everyone would take this as a lesson learned, but it seems old habits are hard to break,” Weekes said.

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Local jail costs increased despite falling crime

Local jail costs increased despite falling crime and fewer people being admitted to jail, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts report. Historically, the roughly 3,000 local jails operating in the United States have received less public and policymaker attention than prisons. But now, the COVID-19 pandemic has put jails—secure correctional facilities, generally operated by county or municipal governments, where people are detained before trial or confined post-conviction for periods usually lasting less than a year—under additional scrutiny. Jails rely on close confinement and so are high risk for disease transmission. Local governments are also confronting the budget implications of the pandemic and looking for potential savings, especially in costly areas such as corrections.

This environment provides an opportunity to examine correctional expenditures and consider strategies that may offer enduring public safety and fiscal benefits. The available data indicates that to mitigate COVID-19 exposure risk, jurisdictions reduced jail populations by about 31% nationwide from March to May 2020, and although those populations partially rebounded, they were still 15% below March levels as of October 2020. Further, people released from jail in March were readmitted less often over the ensuing six months than those released in January, suggesting that the pandemic-related decreases in jail populations did not affect public safety. These reductions may not yield immediate savings, but a sustained commitment to safely cutting the number of people in jail could provide long-term financial benefits. The recent experience of reducing prison populations offers a glimpse of the potential cost savings: The 9% drop in the prison population from 2008 to 2018 virtually flattened corrections spending, which had averaged 5.4% annual growth from 1991 to 2007.

To support state and local efforts to reduce jail spending and protect public safety, The Pew Charitable Trusts undertook an analysis of jail costs, using expenditure data for all U.S. localities, primarily from 2007 and 2017, and related criminal justice data. (See methodology for details on definitions and analyses.) Key findings include:

Local governments spend billions on jails. As of the end of 2017:

• Jail and other local corrections costs had risen sixfold since 1977, with jail costs reaching $25 billion.
• Almost 2 in 5 dollars spent on state and local correctional institutions went to jails.
• About 1 in 17 county dollars was spent on jails.
• The average annual cost of holding a person in jail was about $34,000.
• Roughly a third of jail facility capacity was more than 30 years old, and about 20% of jails were overcrowded, which could present significant capital challenges to local budgets.

Jail costs rose even as crime and admissions to jail fell. As of the end of 2017:

• A 20% decrease in crime and a 19% drop in jail admissions since 2007 had not led to reduced jail spending.
• The portion of local budgets spent on jails did not correlate with state crime rates.
• Small localities spent more per capita on jails than most other jurisdictions, despite having lower crime rates.

Nationwide, counties and cities are seeking to address budgetary pressures during these difficult fiscal times and for the long term. New policies and practices—including many they already have embraced in response to the pandemic—can safely reduce jail populations and associated costs and help them achieve those goals.

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GateHouse: Local jails can be deadly

Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse Media
October 24, 2020

This year, the Trump administration got back into the business of federal executions. After a near total pause over the last 17 years - only three federal executions during that period - the federal government has carried out seven executions since July 14.

Since 2008 there have been 412 executions in this country, all but the last seven were carried out by individual states, most notably Texas. However, the execution chamber is not the most lethal place for American prisoners - that distinction goes to America’s local jails.

According to a recent investigation by Reuters, 7,571 inmates have died in local jails since 2008.

Every year, about 11 million people funnel through local jails. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, between 1970 and 2017, the number of people incarcerated in the nation’s 3,000-plus local jails ballooned - from 150,000 to about 720,000 per day.

Some inmates in local jails are serving short sentences, often for minor offenses that did not land them in a state prison. However, most local inmates are awaiting trial. They have not been convicted. They have not been sentenced.

As revealed by the Reuters investigation, most of the prisoners who lost their lives succumbed to illness, due in part to the low quality of healthcare. The U.S. Supreme Court, through the Eighth Amendment, has addressed the failure of jails and prisons to meet prisoners’ serious medical or mental health needs, but the deaths continue.

More than 2,000 of those inmates took their own lives, often the result of inadequate or nonexistent mental health treatment. The U.S. Department of Justice released a report in 2017 that found between 2006 to 2016 suicide was the leading cause of death for inmates in local jails.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) suicides were responsible for 31% of deaths in local jails. Heart disease was the second-leading cause of death for jail inmates. That report also found that about 40% of inmate deaths in 2016 occurred within the first seven days of admission to jail.

Incarcerated people are five times more likely than the general population to have a serious mental illness and two out of three have a substance abuse disorder. According to BJS, prisoners are also more likely to have had chronic health conditions and infectious diseases. Moreover, many people experience serious medical and mental health crises after they are placed into jail.

Local jails are funded by local tax dollars and the resources are scarce. Programming for inmates in local jails is nearly nonexistent. Training for jail personnel is often impacted by local economic conditions. Healthcare is marginal at best. A lack of money, treatment and training is a lethal combination.

Reuters examined the mortality rate at more than 500 U.S. jails to put together their investigation. Death rates have soared in local jails, rising 35% during the decade ending last year. At least two-thirds of the deceased inmates identified by Reuters - 4,998 people - were never convicted of the charges for which they were being held.

Homicide is also a problem in local jails.

The problem is multifaceted. Inadequate personnel and supervision puts staff and inmates at risk. Reuters found that, at times, local officials report deaths inaccurately, listing homicides or suicides as accidents or illnesses.

Some jails find other ways to keep deaths off the books, according to the investigation, such as “releasing” inmates who have been hospitalized in grave condition, perhaps from a suicide attempt or a medical crisis, so they’re not on the jail’s roster when they die.

A first step in reducing the rising death toll of inmates awaiting trial is to control the local jail population. This can be accomplished through pretrial bail reform. Holding inmates pretrial simply because they cannot afford bond is dangerous and ridiculous. A man or woman accused of crime, who has resources, is no less a danger to the community than a man or woman without resources.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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