FORT SMITH — The Sebastian County jail is limited to 356 inmates, the same number as it has beds in the facility, a county committee unanimously agreed.
County Circuit Judge Gunner DeLay said the cap had informally been in place since a subcommittee from the county’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee recommended it Aug. 18. The policy became official at the committee’s Sept. 2 meeting.
DeLay, committee chairman, said the criminal justice system isn’t looking to release any incarcerated person who would be dangerous to the community. He believes the cap will improve safety for the prisoners and the employees.
“I know the sheriff has had his hands full, and we’ve had populations that have exceeded 400, and we don’t have beds for that many people, and so I think this is going to lower tensions,” DeLay said. “And certainly, even in the covid era, I think it’s going to be a much more medically safe community if you don’t have inmates sleeping on the floor and next to each other.” Sheriff Hobe Runion previously said keeping the inmate population in check would also help the jail operate within its budget.
The Quorum Court established the committee in August 2017 to find ways to reduce the jail population and improve the justice system.
Among the solutions are drug, veterans and mental health courts; a crisis stabilization unit; alternative sentencing and diversion programs; special accelerated court dockets; and electronic monitoring and signature bonds for nonviolent felonies.
The committee also adopted a procedure to implement the prisoner cap, originally proposed by County Circuit Judge Stephen Tabor.
Tabor described it as a three-step process in which the sheriff’s office determines by how much the jail has exceeded the cap. It then notifies the county’s district and circuit judges, prosecutor and public defender, in addition to the Fort Smith police chief, every weekday that this happens. The office provides a list of prisoners who it deems could be released on signature bonds and given court dates. The list is to contain at least twice the number of prisoners needed to be released to meet the cap.
The prosecutor then weighs in on the recommendations, but the judges decide who is released, according to Tabor. Tabor said he believed the criminal justice system operating under this procedure is “going OK,” an opinion shared by DeLay.
“I think so far we’ve had good cooperation in terms of getting emails between the interested players on how to stay under that number,” DeLay said.
Runion said Wednesday that the sheriff’s office has been sending lists of potential prisoners to be released almost every day since the Aug. 18 meeting. The jail had released, as of Wednesday morning, 56 prisoners since Aug. 27.
Prosecuting Attorney Dan Shue said Wednesday that the judges denied release to every prisoner to whom his office objected.
The committee on Sept. 2 also approved other policy options to reduce the jail population for further discussion and study.
DeLay said many of the options would require considerable research to determine what the cost would be to implement them, although some don’t have any cost. The committee will also likely look at how other communities implemented the options.
DeLay said some of the options originated with the county criminal justice system. One was a suggestion by Greenwood District Court Judge Michael Wagoner to forgo failure-to-appear warrants on first appearances in court for nonviolent cases. Wagoner suggested courts instead mail offenders notices within a week and reset the cases for which the offenders didn’t appear.
Wagoner said the practice is already in place in Greenwood District Court. His suggestion could be applied to the Fort Smith District Court and the Sebastian County Circuit Court.