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Polk Jail Ranks Among...

Original article

Polk Jail Ranks Among Nation's Most Busy

By BILLY TOWNSEND | The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 4, 2008

LAKELAND -- The Polk County Jail in 2006 housed more people per capita than any other jail in the state, and it ranked fifth in the nation among cites or counties with their own jail systems, according to a new study.

The study was performed by the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank dedicated to "ending society's reliance on incarceration."

The report focuses critically on the nationwide acceleration of growth of county and city jail populations over the past 10 years, which has occurred as the growth of the larger state and federal prison system population has slowed.

Local jails are generally where the accused await trial after being arrested or where those convicted of misdemeanor or minor felony charges serve their time.

Though Polk ranks highest among the state, Florida's larger counties account for eight of the top 40 incarceration rates in the country, according to the study. Jacksonville ranks sixth nationally. Pinellas County ranks 10th, Hillsborough 20th.

The bulk of the study does not focus on Florida, however, and there's little analysis of why Florida's county jail populations are so high compared to the remainder of the country.

The authors point to several factors contributing to the national population increases. They include:

Increased populations of people detained on immigration violations and held in local jails.

Less reliance on sentences served in the community under monitoring rather than inside a jail.

An increase in the number of people held as they await trial. The study notes that since 1992, "fewer people have been released pretrial without bail, fewer have been granted bail at all, and, of those granted bail, fewer have been able to make the payment."

The study adds: "The increase in the number of unconvicted people held in jails accounts for 85 percent of the total increase of the jail population between 1996 and 2006."

Scott Wilder, a spokesman for the Polk Sheriff's Office, said his agency does not question the figures used in the study. He said the sheriff's office has a number of rehabilitation programs at the jail and plans to open a work camp at the site of the Central County jail in Bartow that could house up to 100 inmates outside the cells and dorms of the actual jail.

Wilder, however, also said that his agency sees incarceration as the best way to prevent crime because the offenders and accused offenders housed inside can't commit crime while on the outside.

The population ranking is not something the sheriff's office considers a problem in and of itself, Wilder said.

Polk County Commissioner Randy Wilkinson, a longtime critic of incarceration rates in the county, said a jail stay can "cripple" a person financially and make it more difficult to get back into society.

He praised Polk Sheriff Grady Judd for some of the programs in place for offenders at the county jail and blamed in part what he called a "pro-arrest" attitude the Florida Legislature for the large jail populations.

Wilkinson's questioning of Polk's incarceration rate predates his arrests in 2002 and 2006 on domestic violence and DUI charges. Wilkinson maintained his innocence in both. The first charge was dropped after he took a three-hour course after a brief scuffle in which he was accused of putting his hands on his ex-wife. No one was injured.

The DUI charge was dropped unconditionally after no drugs or alcohol were found in Wilkinson's system. Lakeland police officers maintained he had been driving and speaking erratically, but a video of the arrest showed little evidence of that.

The study's authors were not immediately available for comment.