To the editor:

Good news for Houghton County and the Jail Task Force. Now that the recommendations for reforming the state justice system have come out as promised by Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist when he visited Houghton County last fall, it appears that there is potential for reducing our jail population markedly.

I don’t question the urgent need for a new jail in our county, but I have consistently doubted that we need to expand the jail capacity as proposed, i.e. going from a 30-bed jail to one with 110 beds. Statistics show that the jail population consists mostly of people awaiting trial and offenders with non-violent crimes related to drugs and alcohol and/or mental illness.

The new state recommendations include ways to divert this population from jails into other more appropriate programs, which our local courts have been doing as much as possible already. (But as the Michigan task force points out, treatment and rehab services for drug/alcohol offenders and offenders with mental health problems are seriously underfunded in our state, especially in rural counties.)

State recommendations also call for reducing or eliminating financial barriers to compliance (many prisoners simply can’t afford to pay bail) and a repeal of the law that lets counties bill jail inmates for their own incarceration. This practice has led to prisoners being released into the community with massive debts that they can’t pay off because they can’t get jobs because of their record, and they end up back in the system, continuing the cycle.

There is more: an overview of the state task force’s recommendations lists eleven different areas for change that would impact our local jail population. If –when–these changes are implemented locally, we should be well-served with a jail not much bigger than our current capacity. Surely a reduced millage request for a new small jail and district court would be passed by the citizens of Houghton County. At last.

The state recommendations can be read at https://courts.michigan.gov/News-Events/Documents/final/Jails%20Task%20Force%20Final%20Report%20and%20Recommendations.pdf.

I look forward to seeing what new ideas might come from the jail task force in the months ahead.