Tarrant County activists are calling for a reduction in the local jail population, pointing to the potential for local government cost savings.
Activists associated with the Justice Network, a Tarrant County coalition that frequently speaks on jail issues, pushed county commissioners at their meeting Tuesday to apply fiscal conservatism to jail costs.
One way to do that is avoid jailing people for low-level crimes, said former Texas State Rep. Lon Burnam.
“What will you do to decrease the time, unsentenced, misdemeanor-charged people stay in the jail?” Burnam said.
Activists requested public records for data about jail population and costs.
On Oct. 27, the average daily cost to house someone in the jail, pre-trial or post-conviction, was $85, the records shared with KERA showed. With 3,842 inmates in custody that day, running the jail on Oct. 27 cost more than $326,000.
Democratic Commissioner Alisa Simmons has advocated for a lower jail population, too.
People in jail for minor charges, with bond amounts less than $500, shouldn’t be incarcerated, Simmons said in August. At that time, the average daily jail population had spiked to 4,700 people, close to maximum capacity, according to the sheriff.
On Tuesday, Simmons called the county’s jail costs, particularly when it comes to jailing people before they’ve been convicted, “expensive and morally troubling.”
KERA reached out to the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office for comment. That agency is in charge of running the jail.
At the podium at Tuesday’s meeting, Becky Delaune suggested that more people use the county’s Mental Health Jail Diversion Center. That’s a facility where people with mental illness or addiction issues, picked up on low-level crimes, can go instead of jail.
As of October, the center saw 10 people a day on average, compared to the goal of 33, according to the organization that runs the center, My Health My Resources (MHMR).
“There is no excuse for this resource to continue to be underutilized,” Delaune said.
In September, the county expanded eligibility for the diversion center from a short list of specific low-level crimes to almost any nonviolent misdemeanor, diversion center director Mark Tittle told KERA in November.
Legal settlements over jail deaths have also cost the county money in recent years. County commissioners recently agreed to pay $1 million to the family of Javonte Myers, who died of a seizure disorder in his cell in 2020. Last year, the family of Dean Stewart, who died by suicide in the jail, received a $400,000 settlement.
The county also extended a contract with a private prison outside Lubbock to house Tarrant County prisoners for $22.5 million. As of that renewal in October, county officials hoped to have a local jail renovated to avoid repeating the private prison expense.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to correct the name of Dean Stewart.
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