What does Shenandoah County’s crowded jail, patient privacy, and the Virginia Tech murders have in common? A lot more than most people suspect.

This is probably the deepest into ‘root causes’ this series will go. But it’s important to understand why and how we maintain order in society; what sociologists call coercive social control. Different decisions about how we treat aberrant behavior give different results —to the individuals, to society, and to your taxes. It’s also central to predicting future jail inmate populations.

There is a reason Sheriff Carter and I urged the Board of Supervisors to request a National Institute of Corrections study, and the Board agreed to ask for the consultation. The NIC team will survey how our justice system is working, then present analysis on our system’s trade-offs, and how it affects us communally and financially.

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Across the US in the 1960s and 1970s, we started a massive project to deinstitutionalize —release from confinement— most of the patients in mental institutions. Arguments in favor of it ranged from patients’ rights, modern drug treatments, outpatient therapies, and reducing common abuses of the system.

Opponents claimed it was only done to save money; but regardless of the reason, the process continues relentlessly today.  To advocates of deinstitutionalization, the process was a success. Yet recent research shows that it was not; not in the least.

Professor Bernard E. Harcourt at the University of Chicago Law School compiled the first accurate historical records on jail and prison incarcerations. His data shows that there was only a temporary reduction in coercive social control. After this brief period, we now institutionalize the same rate as before; but the vast majority are now in jails or prisons.

If you want to understand why Shenandoah County’s jail needs expanding, just factor our increased population with the overall increased rates of imprisonment.

One implication of Bernard Harcourt’s research is that —to a great extent— institutionalization and incarceration are interchangeable for the purposes of coercive social control. By and large, either jails or mental hospitals have about the same effect in reducing crime.

For years we have attributed crime rates to poverty, the economy, unemployment, abortion, age groups, drugs, some drugs but not others, racism, cultural norms, and a host of other reasons; many of them outwardly very reasonable. At best, these factors have only minor effects on crime rates. Harcourt’s study blows them all away.

• The single most important factor affecting crime rates is the number of people locked up.
• In general we lock up the right people; those that commit crimes.
• That putting criminals in jail or treating the mentally ill in institutions are much the same for the purposes of crime reduction.

For Shenandoah County citizens, there are some other lessons to be taken from this new research. One is that —if you believe anything about modern treatment of mental illness— we can reduce jail inmates and crime with more aggressive and effective mental health programs.

The other observation is that the Incarceration Revolution is almost over. We’re close to reaching historic levels of incarceration, and there are diminishing returns from locking up more people. The rates of incarceration are going to stabilize, and the growth of prisoner populations will slow down. Shenandoah County may not need as much jail space as forecast.

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Credit: Thanks to Professor Bernard E. Harcourt for generous permission to use his research and illustrations. His working papers on this subject can be downloaded as PDFs:
From The Asylum To The Prison: Rethinking The Incarceration Revolution
From The Asylum To The Prison: Rethinking The Incarceration Revolution, Part II

Hat tip to Professor Volokh for having Harcourt discuss his work on the Volokh Conspiracy.

Federal mandates are forcing Virginia to replace its old software for voter registrations. That part is good. What’s bad is how it’s being done and what we’re heading for.  Reasons for slipped deadlines have been ignored, and the State Board of Elections (SBE) has put defective software into play.

Background
Virginia’s previous voter registration system was the Virginia Voter Registration System, a computer program developed in 1973. It evolved over time to meet most requirements, but it’s written in COBOL —a near-obsolete computer language— and is expensive to maintain since technical staff are scarce. In addition, the old program doesn’t meet federal requirements under the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA).

Earlier studies recommended replacement of the aging system, and SBE decided to replace the old software to meet HAVA’s January 1, 2006 deadline. The new registration system is called Virginia Elections and Registration Information System (VERIS). Unisys was selected as the primary contractor for the new software and hardware to implement VERIS.

A critical point is that ‘replacement’ did not mean updating functions and tasks; it meant a completely different way of dealing with voter registrations. As primary contractor, Unisys subcontracted to QUEST for software and Aradyme to convert data.

Progress to date
“Unisys has missed every major project milestone in the original project schedule” –Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts (more…)

The name is Fathers Day, and it always makes me reflect on fatherhood.

After the release of a preliminary environmental assessment, Virginia’s Department of Transportation (VDOT) backed away from plans to widen the roadway under intense public pressure. Most of the opponents to the proposed 6 lane concept by Star Solutions endorsed increased railroad as a partial solution.

Shenandoah County’s Board of Supervisors was one of many boards to endorse a model by Rail Solutions, which contended railways could reduce truck traffic enough that the interstate wouldn’t need complete expansion.

Norfolk Southern just announced the “I-81 Crescent Corridor” project. The entire plan comes in at $2 billion, with $40 million already committed from Virginia.

The scheme has glowing reviews from newspapers in the north, center and southern end of the Shenandoah Valley. The glow they’re seeing is from red flags.

The first problem is examining how much traffic will actually be reduced. The answer —from Norfolk Southern— is “Not much”. With a completion date of 2013, the best-case reduction is hardly noticeable. There will be no reduction in cars, and only a 5% reduction in truck traffic from today’s figures.

By 2016 (three years later) the effect on the interstate will be gone, a $2 billion dollar band-aid.

The plan involves upgrading and expanding existing rail lines to accommodate more, faster trains; purchasing new locomotives and railcars; and building new terminals in Maryland and Tennessee and improving others.  –Hampton Roads.com [emphasis added]

No new lines, no new rail; instead they will be using the existing tracks to put a million trucks per year —on trains— through the small towns and countryside of Valley communities. VDOT had to do an environmental impact study on any expansion of the interstate itself. Norfolk Southern should do the same for the effects of 24-hour per day high-speed rail.

Before any more Virginia taxpayer’s money is committed to a potential non-solution, an auditing or oversight authority must be set up. Despite the railroad’s best intentions, last year its “capital expenditures totaled $6.1 billion, compared to its net income of $5.2 billion earned in the same period.” That’s a loss of $900 million dollars in one year.

Interstate-81 is overcrowded and getting worse. But before we waste billions to make a mess off of the highway —without improving the interstate itself— some caution and commonsense is needed.

Why are Shenandoah County’s Board of Supervisors looking at building a regional jail? To answer that question, we have to back up and see why they’re looking at building any jail at all.

The bottom line is that our Shenandoah County jail in Woodstock is old, it is getting worn out, and is becoming too small for the prisoner population we now have.

In old homes the ‘technology’ is so simple that it easily lasts for centuries. Doors use hinges to open on, and a simple mechanism to latch or keep it closed. In a jail, the hinges last forever, but the latches use electric motors. Our current jail uses lock motors that haven’t been manufactured for years, and which are getting harder to find (and more expensive) every year. They also fail at a higher rate each year; that’s just the way mechanical gadgets function —or fail to function as this case may be.

A house can get electricity or plumbing upgraded relatively easily. Often not as easily as new construction, but it’s not too hard to route new wires or install new piping. Jails are constructed of steel-reinforced concrete; so installing wires, plumbing, lighting, heating or air-conditioning turns into an expensive nightmare. Almost any alteration or modernization —even just adding insulation to save on heating costs— becomes extremely expensive.

Changing standards.

Everybody knows we older folks walked to school ten miles away, through waist-deep snow and it was uphill both ways. Maybe not quite, but we all went to schools without air-conditioning, vending machines, and a lot of other modern conveniences.

Community standards and expectations change over time; and so have standards about prisons and prisoners. Jail inmates normally have access to radio, television, and phones. That’s negligible from a funding viewpoint, but newer space requirements are significant.

Minimum floor area and volume per prisoner have substantially increased since the old jail was built. A new jail built to modern space requirements —if put in the same place as the old 55-inmate jail— would only hold 24 prisoners; less than half current capacity.

Existing Jail

85-inmate Jail

A new jail built to modern space requirements, Woodstock’s zoning, and designed to hold the current population won’t even fit on the land without demolishing part of the Circuit Court!

In the end, there two fundamental problems: Retrofitting the existing structure will be extremely expensive, and an expansion onto the current site won’t fit unless the structure gets a variance and is built three stories tall.

Shenandoah County will soon have to build —at least some of— its jail at a new site. As a practical matter, splitting a jail into two sites, with two kitchens, two laundries, and two of every support service is wasteful.

The spring crop of gamebirds sure seems to be good this year. Lots of wild turkey nests found in the fields —though I haven’t seen any turkey poults yet.

This mother grouse was spotted standing in the road. Last year, another went through the same behavior until a tourist ran her over. Rather than see it happen again, I chased this one back into the woods.

What was funny wasn’t the mother bird’s stupidity —their brains are only the size of a pea— but the six or seven chicks following. From birth they are superbly camouflaged, and they freeze while their mother clucks warnings.
Read the rest . . .

The wonder of computers is often offset by the curse of robotic spam. To keep the pests away, until now readers had to register to comment. It’s an easy method, but required remembering a username and password.

I’m starting an experiment to make commenting easier —for most people. New software allows anyone to enter comments as long as they can add or subtract single-digit numbers.

To make a remark about any article, fill in your name, email, and optional website in the proper blank spaces. Then calculate the answer to the “Spam protection” question and fill that space —with digits; not words. Write your comment and submit it.

I hope this works.

This is my website, and comments are expected to be civil. Remarks that are out-of-line with public behavior (no profanity, personal insults, obscenity, threats, and the like) can and will be deleted.

This letter should be shared with all Shenandoah County citizens. Our county attorney has now collected back taxes amounting to more than $1 million! If that isn’t enough, over $700,000 collected was due from one owner on 95 parcels.

All of these collections were made after repeated requests to pay, and we have worked with the (very few) individuals who had hardship conditions.

Shenandoah County has —the last few years— tried to keep the rates low by limiting unneeded spending. Nonetheless, those scofflaws who don’t pay force more burdens on decent people who do pay their portion.

Congratulations is due to our attorney, Don Litten of Litten and Sipe LLP, for his efforts on this.  He restores the good name of lawyers.

Our current jail is getting crowded. You might say “So what?” But there are serious consequences from crowding and overcrowding.

The first problem is decreased inmate safety. Most jail prisoners are local people held for minor crimes, with some for more serious, and a few for very dangerous offenses. As crowding increases, the probability of violence and injury also increases.

This threatens both inmates and jail staff. To counter this problem of increased violence, more monitoring is needed; in turn needing more jail staff and more cameras. At some point, the danger to inmates and deputies increases disproportionately to the increase in prisoners.

There are real dollar costs from overcrowding. The first is direct medical costs for injury; if you thought emergency room fees were high, wait until you see a hospital invoice for treating a belligerent prisoner with two deputies guarding them.

Jail personnel salaries jump as you disproportionately add deputies to retain control. The state’s Compensation Board pays jail staff on a per-prisoner formula. There is no extra compensation for better or worse conditions, so the county carries any extra costs.

Finally, as conditions worsen, there is the real potential for lawsuits from injured or threatened prisoners. Despite the fact that most prisoners are lawbreakers, getting beaten to a pulp isn’t part of the bargain, and the courts take a hard stand against letting that happen.

All these additional costs come straight from county funds —whether medical, salary, or lawsuit costs— meaning that your taxes must pay them.  So where does Shenandoah County stand?

These are the latest actual population figures available. They only go to September 2006 and there’s an error in 2003 —the figure will be updated that as I get current information.

It needs to be added that our jail can safely operate with more than the design capacity. How much more is subjective, and will be different for each person you ask. Whatever the answer, we need to look for ways to relieve this problem.