House advances bill to remove inmates from crowded jails, but bail reform stalls
The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would make it easier to transfer state inmates serving felony time in dangerously overcrowded jails to other jails that have open beds.
However, discussion on a second bill proposing reforms to Kentucky’s broken bail system was delayed for a week. Judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers continue to argue behind the scenes over language in House Bill 410, said House Judiciary Chairman Jason Petrie, R-Elkton, who is one of the bill’s sponsors.
Wednesday was the halfway point for the 60-workday session, so an informal deadline is approaching for bills to leave their original committees. A bail reform bill died for lack of action in the General Assembly last year while thousands of defendants awaiting trial sat in Kentucky jails, many of them because they could not afford to pay bail.
“If we can vote (the bail reform bill) out of committee in the next week or two, then I’m still confident we could make it happen,” Petrie said. “Get much beyond that and I start to get worried.”
House Bill 361, the state inmate transfer bill, proceeds to the full House.
The Kentucky Department of Corrections needs flexibility when conditions deteriorate in a jail, said the bill’s lead sponsor, state Rep. Deanna Frazier, R-Richmond. Presently, once state inmates are assigned to a jail to serve their felony time, it’s hard for the state to transfer them somewhere else, Petrie said.
HB 361 would allow court-approved transfer agreements between jails once a jail reaches 150 percent of its capacity if the receiving jail has vacant space. As of last week, 19 jails in Kentucky were at or above 150 percent of capacity.
Nearly half of Kentucky’s 23,151 state inmates are serving their sentences in county jails, not state prisons, alongside roughly 11,600 local inmates. Some jails hold twice as many people as they’re supposed to, with prisoners sleeping on concrete floors and in hallways and converted recreation rooms. Violence, filth and other problems occur as a result.
The Madison County Detention Center in Frazier’s House district was overcrowded at 190 percent of capacity last month, with 184 beds and 350 inmates, including state inmates. However, not far away in Laurel County, the newly opened $25 million jail had 664 beds with 147 vacancies. Another new jail in the region, in Knox County, reported 66 vacancies.
Amanda Hall, a criminal justice reform advocate with the ACLU of Kentucky, told the committee that her group appreciated the bill’s overall intent but would prefer that it not be limited to jails at “an arbitrary” 150 percent of capacity or higher.
Instead, the Department of Corrections should be allowed to remove state inmates from any jail that has reached its population capacity when there is a safety or health risk, Hall said.
“This 150 percent threshold sets a bar which may preclude the Department of Corrections from transferring individuals away from inhumane living arrangements simply because the jail is only at 145 percent of capacity,” Hall said. “We don’t think this bill is as helpful as it could be dealing with overcrowding if we took this number out.”
This story was originally published February 19, 2020 at 4:13 PM.
