Size of jail an issue for Leelanau hopefuls

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Sgt. Bill White mans the master control in the Leelanau County Corrections Center, overseeing the 96 cameras in the jail and courthouse, and controlling the doors inside the lockup area. It's one of the minimum three posts mandated for the facility by the Michigan Department of Corrections. Record-Eagle/Jan-Michael Stump

July 27, 2012

Size of jail an issue for Leelanau hopefuls

BY GLENN PUIT gpuit@record-eagle.com The Record Eagle Fri Jul 27, 2012, 07:14 AM EDT

SUTTONS BAY — Leelanau County's Detention Center was built to hold up to 72 inmates, but in 2011, the jail averaged just 29 inmates per day.

Empty beds at the six-year-old, $5 million jail off M-204 are now a campaign issue among candidates for Leelanau County sheriff and Board of Commissioners.

Many candidates question why the county built a jail to house so many inmates, and whether jailing costs can be cut in a county where conservative roots and political discourse over government expenditures run deep.

All three candidates in the Republican primary for sheriff addressed jail size in recent interviews, and each said if elected they will cut costs or find ways to better use the facility.

"The new sheriff has a bull to wrestle with," said sheriff's candidate Del Moore. "Either get new prisoners in there right away or lay someone off. This has been going on ... for years and it's not right for the taxpayers."

Sheriff Michael Oltersdorf, who's not seeking another term, said political candidates who criticize the jail are just playing politics. The jail is too big for current demand, he conceded, but he contends critics forget it was built for needs 20 years out.

The facility is being run on a tight budget, and having too few inmates isn't necessarily a bad problem.

"The size of the jail and amount of beds: is it too big for our needs today? Yeah," Oltersdorf said. "Who's fault is it? Nobody's."

"If our jail was full, and we had 72 beds full, would the candidates be happy, and would the judges be happy, and the community be happy? Then our liability is sky high and your costs increase, but it's easier to point fingers and say, 'The jail's half empty.'"

In the late 1990s, law enforcement officials in Leelanau and Grand Traverse counties and state police discussed building a regional justice facility west of Traverse City. The idea flopped because the counties wanted to maintain local control.

Meanwhile, plans for a jail in Leelanau County developed at a time when political debate raged in Michigan about prison overcrowding and the state's budgetary crisis.

"We needed a 50-bed jail right then "¦ so the commissioners decided to build it 20 years out," Oltersdorf said.

Experts from the National Institute of Corrections and a graduate student from Penn State analyzed county demographics and county growth predictions. That, Oltersdorf said, led to the 72-bed jail with the capacity to add 10 more beds.

But after the jail was built, the economy crashed, growth stalled and a movement to reduce jail populations took hold in Michigan. Regionally, the effort to find incarceration alternatives for offenders with substance abuse problems manifested itself in Sobriety Court.

Sobriety Court, Oltersdorf said, greatly reduced the number of inmates who receive lengthy county jail sentences.

Under that practice, many drug and alcohol offenders are treated and receive probation.

"Everyone spends their first night in jail when they are arrested, but after arrest, we are not seeing them as much," Oltersdorf said.

Grand Traverse County's jail also has more beds than inmates. Grand Traverse sheriff's Capt. Bob Hall said jail capacity is 194; on Thursday it housed 134 inmates.

"A few years ago we were in excess of 200," Hall said. "There's been a lot of efforts to reduce jail populations, and we are seeing the effects of that."