In 2019, the annual cost of jailing in Hays County had skyrocketed 7,000% in just five years, and today the Sheriff’s office wants at least an additional $10 million –– let’s consider why there’s no money to address our unethical and terribly expensive mass-incarceration infatuation.
In the past six years, our county’s population has only increased roughly 25% while our jail population has exploded at closer to a 55% climb. We have invested in incarceration rather than representation, and we have gotten what we paid for.
For years, “indigent defense” spending for Texas counties –– the average amount spent on legal defense for the poor –– has been $10 per person. In 2017 and 2018, Hays spent only $5 per person. In 2019, we spent $7 per person; meanwhile the national average was $17 per person.
Yet, in these turbulent times of grave economic downturn and budget shortfalls, the Hays County Sheriff’s office is seeking to enlarge their coffers by eight figures next week, to an oversized total budget of $43,000,000 plus in 2021.
Why is it that costs are never a concern when it comes to funding these punishment bureaucracies?
So far, $100 million on a 2016 bond to fund jail expansion, $3 million plus a year to pay other counties to hold our detainees; $2 million on juvenile detention, $6 million plus for a prosecutor's office; and now $43 million plus for the sheriff’s office?
We have money for guns, ammunition, SWAT vehicles and jails –– yet there is no room in the budget to adequately fund social services that support housing, mental health, drug addiction, education, food justice and indigent defense?
Our system plainly prioritizes violence and weaponry over funding, in a holistic manner, our residents’ well-being –– investments that very well may also address crime at its root by providing the care needed to overcome addiction, mental health challenges and living unhoused.
Our penchant for confinement has led us in recent years to start paying other counties handsomely for locking up people who are legally innocent. This practice is called “outsourcing.”
In 2015, we outsourced 26 people on average, costing us $407,000. In 2016, we outsourced 111 people on average, costing us $2.09 million for the year. This drastic quadruple jump coincides with when a jail expansion was pushed via a bond package, again investing in incarceration not legal representation.
Attorneys who defend the poor in Hays are called court-appointed attorneys; they are not public defenders. Court-appointed attorneys are private contractors who can work in multiple counties; have no caseload limits, and they cannot easily be held accountable by the public or clients. It's very difficult to get a poorly performing court-appointed attorney off your case if you can't afford an attorney.
There is absolutely zero empirical support for the claim that court appointment systems produce better results for defen-dants than full-time public defender systems. Plenty of studies from across Texas and indeed the nation prove this point. Public Defender Offices (PDOs) reduce jail time and costs, case time and costs, recidivism and the likelihood of conviction more so than their court-appointed counterparts. Any belief to the contrary is an opinion based in politics rather than factual evidence-based research, with resistance to a PDO chiefly coming from people who see their work and practices potentially disrupted by a PDO, or those who fear systemic change: judges, court-appointed attorneys, prosecutors, and police.
Any job has bad professionals and good ones, including court-appointed attorneys (in fact, Mano Amiga works with several), but this is not about individuals; it’s about a superior system of operation. PDOs function as an institutional counterweight to the prosecutor's office in a way the Defense Bar never can.
Hays County has its priorities out of whack: we spend millions more prosecuting poor people than we do defending them, and at this rate we’ll continue to outsource even after the jail expansion is complete in September, which will then be used to articulate the need for an even bigger jail: “Let’s throw $50 million plus into a new hole!”
Yet, the Hays County Criminal Justice Coordinating commission seemingly abandoned its mission, not meeting for a 7-month gap recently, in the midst of a global pandemic where it’s been declared county jails will be the epicenter of this crisis.
Our jail contains an infection rate for COVID ten times the infection rate of the rest of Hays, where officials have acknowledged that roughly 85% of people there are legally innocent individuals simply unable to afford bail. At least 1 in 4 now have COVID-19.
When a state agency offered an opportunity to cover 80% of a $1.2 million Public Defender Office in its first year for Hays, costs were expressed as a concern.
Decision makers, led by Criminal Justice Commission chair Lon Shell, upon neglecting duties for seven months, said they didn't have enough time to make a decision about whether they should pass something for the benefit of impoverished community members. Ask directly and they’ll give you an excuse that points fingers elsewhere, barking like a D.C. politico giving you the Washington dip-down turnaround, rather than a straight-talking Texas official.
We have ample funding to assure adequate legal defense for low-income community members; but we lack county leadership who will prioritize what is right and just.
