Travis County Commssioners Court
October 1, 2002
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Agenda Item 22
22 is to receive report and recommendations from jail overcrowding taskforce and take appropriate action. And our only other item, steven -- christian smith and your staff is number 10 after this one. Before executive session.>> good morning. I'm katy brod rick with justice and public safety. I understood that the judge wanted a status report today from the sheriff's office with regard to whether females have been sent out of county. I notified the sheriff's office of that but it's possible that the major might have thought that this item wouldn't come up as early as it did.
>> can you repeat that?
>> I had notified the sheriff margo frazier's office that the judge was requested a status report on whether females had been sent out of county on the contracts that you all sort of approved a few weeks ago.
>> was that the board county?
>> I believe so, yes. I'm not involved this those contracts.
>> I notified the sheriff's office to please come and make that status report, but it's possible that they wouldn't have anticipated this item to come up as early as it did since most of the agenda --
>> you may well serve the purpose.
>> I can give a status report on the activity of the jail overcrowding taskforce. The major thing that we have going forward at this point that's new is the pilot of 24 hour magistration that's proceeding. You will have budget amendments on the agenda next week that are to put funds into the court administration budget and into pretrial services, to staff that 24 hour magistration pilot. We're coming in under budget on that. We had estimated it at about 14,000, and it came out a little less than 10,000 for the pilot. The super jail call, which was the class a and b misdemeanors, as I understand it, although I haven't seen the new written procedures, that entered into a new phase as of today. They are going to discontinue doing the really large afternoon jail call dockets for the a and b misdemeanors because they feel like they have brought down the number of pending misdemeanors substantially and they're going to go into a new phase that is really sort of -- has more similarities to the old process, I suppose, for holding dockets. But places an added emphasis on getting cases filed faster and disposed faster when they're jail cases. Since I haven't seen the procedures yet I can't really comment on what they're doing, but hopefully I 'll have those for y'all in the next weaning or so.
>> who will monitor those numbers for us?
>> I'm monitoring the jail sub population reports. Usually we would get those -- I 'll have those in the next couple ofs days. They do those in the last couple of days of the month and I haven't received those yet.
>> there's a dramatic dropoff in case dispositions after owe drop super docket, we ought to know?
>> right. And I have the statistics for the number of misdemeanor jail cases that were disposed for the month of September, which came from the sheriff's office yesterday or the day before from the transportation section and they're monitoring the disposition rates as a function of how many people are we transporting to court and is that transportation of you in terms of affecting disposition. So I have those statistics from September. We'll compare that for October when the time comes and see if the disposition rate come down. We'll also have to compare that to the pending number of misdemeanors because they may come down since there are fewer misdemeanors pending.
>> with that particular report and information that you just suggested in the transfer requests that are going to be made, next week especially with the jail -- the 24 hour magistration, can that be part of that? Because I like the -- I know you said October. Is that readily available? Because I think the package as you present this, your report, the 24-hour magistration I think is very significant, and also the court -- what would it take to get that here for the 24-hour pilot project for the 24-hour magistration, what would it take to have the csc pretrial folks to be here? Because I really would like to get a feel for what they're going through right now. And have they been notified basically of coming before the court?
>> I can ask them to come when the budget transfers come to court on Tuesday. There are budget transfers into their budget to help them redeploy their staff for 24-hour magistration. On the subject of the disposition statistics, I guess we've got sort of an apple and oranges conversation going on here. The disposition statistics have to do with jail call -- with the misdemeanor jail call, and we just have September so far, and there is going to be a change in process in October, and we can at the end of October bring you the October statistics. I can bring you the September statistics to court next week.
>> that's what I'm referring to. Bring me what you have already.
>> that's not really tied into the 24-hour magistration.
>> but it's still a packet of information that we're being presented, even though it is cat gorized, it is still a packet of information within categories.
>> I will ask pretrial services to send a representative to court next week on the budget transfers.
>> thanks.
>> with regard to class c diversion, the main sort of pick up in that process is the questions that are involving around the identification process, whether class a misdemeanors are being appropriately put through an identification process to ensure that they don't have any outstanding warrant that are not class c's. We are putting together a subcommittee of jail overcrowding taskforce to deal with that issue, that committee will include a.p.d., The sheriff's office and it folks from both the city and county because most of this is a technological question. The rocket docket is proceeding. We got a status report from the da's office last Thursday with regard to the first week of rocket docket. They are seeing about a 50% rate of cases at first setting, which is just unheard of for felonies.
>> that is really good.
>> right. And the actual number of cases that we're seeing in the rocket docket the first week was relatively small. People remarked on that, but it's going to be a matter of ramping is up because they just use folks that have been arrested the week of September third were on the rocket docket the week of September 17th. So we would expect those numbers to build. The da's office also has indicated that once they have the rocket docket procedures set and everybody is moving well, they might expand that out to different types of cases other than just drug cases. Other than that the main issue that we're dealing with is the paper ready process. We've been concentrating pretty hard on the process of getting the various documents ready from the departments that generate those documents. And they put those documents into the sheriff's office, they put them together into what's called a pen pact. And at that point when the pen packet, when the person is ready to transfer to the state. With regard to the increase in dispositions that we've seen, especially felony dispositions, probably in large part due to the rocket docket, along with some staffing shifts in the sheriff's function in the paper ready office, we're seeing a backlog develop in at office where the documents are being fed into that office at a much higher rate than they had been previously, and the staff in that area are somewhat diminished from what they had been because of some medical leave issues. And so we're looking at whether that office is appropriately staffed, if we're having this increase of dispositions and increase of paperwork coming into the office. And demonstrating whether the addition of an f.t.e. To that office would have a substantial impact on the jail population by helping people get transferred out to id and the state jails faster. So that's an issue we'll be bringing back to the jail overcrowding taskforce in the future once we have some statistics to sort of back up the phenomenon that's occurring. [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>> of all of the pleas that I heard this morning, that was only one that was like oh, yes thank you so much for spending time in our jail because this was a batterer, quite complicated plea arrangement in terms of time, classes and -- and protective orders and it was like oh, yes, that one you outing to have been -- ought to have been there, thank you so much for being a part of our system. The rest of them I was just amazed. That really gets down to as ronnie earle likes to bring us into, what is justice? What I was looking at that morning as technically justice according to what the law is, but I don't get any feeling that there was any kind of -- kind of justice according to how the taxpayers would think about the huge sums of money that were spent related to somebody getting arrested, processed, throwing an attorney at them, spending time in our system and it comes down to 10 days in jail because they decided to do something that was really not of the -- think the level -- I think the level that you spend that kind of money on and throw the book at. I don't know. I was amazed that morning. Not really a question, just an observe vision. I think people should be shocked to see the kinds of cases -- then of course you spend time and -- in judge muir's courtroom in terms of oh, my god some of the complicated things that we have going related to the abuse of children. Then you go, yes, throw the book at them. I was amazed at the petty stuff that there was no lesson learned. There was no restitution to the community. Somebody got to stay in our facility and have a -- a three squares and food, clothing, medicine, that wasn't justice.
>> you might want to get the judge's perspective on that [ laughter ]
>> they might want to weigh in on that.
>> weigh in on it with us.
>> I know. This was my dennis miller rant for the day. It was just -- just floored me. To see what was going on. It was an observation.
>> do you have a report take you gave this morning, I did not have it in my backup, but I guess -- I get this information --
>> I didn't have anything written up, there wasn't any backup.
>> okay. Just basically -- okay. I would like to have something in writing to what you have presented, per se. And so it would be something that I can -- that I can refer to since I wasn't taking [inaudible] as you were giving your -- I wasn't taking notes as you were given your presentation.
>> electronic works for me.
>> same thing here.
>> I can e-mail it.
>> thank you,
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:25 AM