Alternatives in South Dakota could come without changing the law on who's booked and who isn't.
John Hult|jhult@argusleader.com
Every city has one: A subset of the chronically homeless known throughout the justice system for their run-ins with the law, alcoholism and mental health needs.
Their troubles are persistent, and the response to them swift, predictable and expensive.
Police and jailers know them by name, having arrested and housed them dozens of times for petty, largely nonviolent offenses. In Sioux Falls, they're known as "frequent flyers." In Minneapolis, one initiative dubbed them "The Downtown 100."
The massive uptick in arrests for trespassing in Sioux Falls since 2010 has hit this population the hardest, although former Police Chief Doug Barthel says a person's status as homeless doesn't factor into arrest decisions.
Even so, the pressure placed on the county's jail and legal system by that uptick and the other crimes associated with the city's most difficult residents has forced officials to consider new approaches to handling them.
Many within the system doubt that jailing someone is the most cost-effective or humane way to handle chronic homelessness, and other approaches are gaining prominence.
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Minneapolis launched a specialty court for its "Downtown 100" to get the most resource-intensive homeless into permanent housing.
In Albuquerque, N.M., the mayor's office partnered with nonprofit groups to offer work to panhandlers who draw unwanted attention at storefronts, libraries or street corners.
The state of Nebraska no longer allows the jailing of misdemeanor offenders, which excludes everyone from first-offense drunken drivers to those charged with simple trespassing.
The options in Sioux Falls have expanded already. The county-run SafeHome apartment complex gives the formerly homeless a place to stay and allows them to drink, albeit in a restricted and controlled fashion. Officers who might otherwise arrest SafeHome residents for trespassing sometimes take them home.
That's the kind of thing 2nd Circuit Judge Doug Hoffman would like to see happen more often.
"If you can re-route someone and be reasonably confident that they'll stay re-routed and not just go directly back to where they were, that's probably a better option than the jail," Hoffman said. "We could look at options that could be more cost-effective, but really just more effective."
Problem population
Hoffman is part of a committee formed this summer as an outgrowth of discussions on expanding the Minnehaha County Jail. The subcommittee is focused on possible solutions to pre-trial detainment concerns at the jail.
About 80 percent of the people detained at the 400-bed downtown jail at any given time are awaiting trial, with the longest-term residents being those charged with serious felonies. The majority of those booked for lower-level offenses are released quickly on bond or their own recognizance.
For many of the frequent flyers, however, bond is not an option.
Either they cannot afford it, or their newest offense is coupled with a failure to appear warrant for a missed court appearance, for which a person is ineligible for release without the OK from a magistrate judge.
Everyone booked at the jail has the right to have their case reviewed within 48 hours. On long weekends, that means judges like Hoffman come in for reviews. Like the judges who see low-level offenders on Monday mornings, the weekend judges tend to release trespassers with credit for time served.
"Oftentimes, when we see someone who's in on a misdemeanor offense who's there because they can't pay the bond, we'll cut them lose on a PR bond," Hoffman said.
The problem is that the most troubled of the offenders tend to return quickly. A pre-trial analysis of jail space found that about half of the pre-trial bed days at the jail are used by offenders who've been there more than once in the past month.
Expanding the use of citations for Class 2 misdemeanors and offering more book-and-release options for Class 1 misdemeanors could save 14,191 bed days a month, the report said.
Booking options vary
Citations instead of bookings are part of the difference for Omaha's Douglas County Corrections Center. Wide classes of misdemeanor offenses are ineligible for booking into jail in Nebraska.
The restrictions make a difference. The Minnehaha County Jail booked 17,273 people in fiscal year 2014, which ended in July 2014. This year, the jail's on pace to break 18,000 bookings, Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead said.
The Douglas County Corrections Center has twice the space of the Minnehaha County Jail, and Omaha has twice the population of Sioux Falls, but booking numbers are similar.
Last year, Omaha's jailers handled 17,017 total bookings, according to Lt. Dan Scherer of the Douglas County Sheriff's Office.
Figures like that are troubling for Minnehaha County Commissioner Jeff Barth.
"We're constantly talking about the number of bodies we're moving in and out of the county jail, but these are offenses that don't require incarceration," Barth said. "If we want to spend tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars putting people in jail, we can do that, but it doesn't seem like the smartest way to go."
Alternatives in South Dakota could come without changing the law on who's booked and who isn't, though, and there is a model for doing so already.
Juvenile offenders are scored upon arrest using what's called a Risk Assessment Instrument. The worksheet factors in their level of offense, risk to miss court and available supervision options and returns a number.
That number determines whether the child is held at the Juvenile Detention Center, funneled into a day or night supervision center or released to parents, although officers can override the determination under certain circ*mstances.
The program in Sioux Falls and Rapid City has dramatically trimmed the number of young offenders in custody since its use began in 2012 and become a model statewide.
Hoffman's group has applied for grant funding from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to find out if a similar model could work for adults in Minnehaha County.
"The data and resources that are out there tell you that supervision is more effective than detention," Hoffman said.
Outside the jail options
SafeHome Director Jeff Yarborogh knows that his tenants spend less time in jail or in detox after moving in to the supervised house at Third Street and Minnesota Avenue.
Supervision alone can help stop problems before they start for the residents, many of whom had been among the most resource-intensive citizens in Sioux Falls before their placement there.
"I tell the guys, 'Hey, if you're downtown and you're drunk or you're panhandling, you're taking a risk,' " Yarborough said. "Once they move in here, they're not out there as much. We still have guys who get arrested, but it's nowhere near as much."
SafeHome carries an added benefit for residents who've found themselves barred from certain properties. Police know them and know where they stay.
"Some of our guys, they'll just bring back here," Yarborough said.
The option is there, but it only works for 33 people at a time. What's more, Yarborough said, the house can be "the worst place in the world" if someone wants to get sober.
In Minneapolis, the Housing Outreach for Minneapolitans Establishing Security or HOMES Court targeted the chronically homeless, focusing initially on the "Downtown 100" group. The court operates similar to a drug court, with multiple court officers assigned to monitor each participant and move them, if possible, into intensive, workable treatment programs.
"In some cases, there are people that have mental health issues. We want to get those people in to see a counselor and see a psychiatrist," said John Hultquist, the court's administrator.
The ultimate goal is to move the person into stable housing, Hultquist said, preferably a sober house. If that means a "wet house" like SafeHome that allows alcohol, the option is there. If the participant can follow through on their commitments, all their pending misdemeanor charges are dismissed and they get a clean slate.
The number of arrests for program participants was five a year on average, according to a summer assessment of the project's effectiveness. Arrests declined by 60 percent.
Other cities have tried more innovative approaches. Albuquerque's "There's A Better Way" campaign partners with local nonprofit groups to do outreach for panhandlers. Last month, the city refitted a van as a traveling outreach bus, offering day labor to panhandlers at a rate of $9 an hour. A shelter group pays for lunch and takes in the workers after the job is done.
The program's outreach center, which connects callers with resources for housing and work, has taken more than 4,000 calls since June.
The idea of funneling pretrial inmates – or any inmates, for that matter – into community service work is a welcome idea to Sheriff Mike Milstead. The jail had a "sentenced to serve" program for low-level, nonviolent offenders a few years ago, but criminal justice reform has more of those inmates serving out probation sentences.
With so few nonfelony offenders behind bars, the sheriff scarcely has enough inmates to do workaday upkeep in and outside the county jail.
"We struggle to find enough people just to mow the lawn at the corrections center," Milstead said.
The look of what that or any outside-the-jail option is is far from certain, though.
"It takes developing the program, establishing the rules, looking at who would run it … but I think it's something worth discussing," Milstead said.
