Seattle wants not only to defund police but close the jails

Exec Explains Plan To End 

Youth Detention, Close 

Seattle Jail

Instead of incarceration, King County Executive Dow 

Constantine says the county will focus on prevention, rehabilitation and reduction.

Patch.com,

22 July, 2020

SEATTLE, WA — King County Executive Dow Constantine has further outlined his dual proposals to end juvenile detention in King County and to phase out the King County Correctional Facility, a jail in downtown Seattle.

King County announced both plans Tuesday, and says both are, in part, a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Over the past few months of the pandemic jails and detention centers across King County have worked to reduce the number of people held in detention as much as possible, in an attempt to prevent coronavirus outbreaks in our normally close-quartered criminal justice system.

"Phasing out centralized youth detention is no longer a goal in the far distance. We have made extraordinary progress and we have evolved to believe that even more can be done," Constantine wrote. "The COVID crisis has shown that things once deemed impossible are now possible, and we are challenging ourselves and the entire community to keep to that path."

The executive also credits the recent protests across the country over police violence and bias against Black Americans as another catalyst for his office, prodding them to reconsider how King County handles crime.

"People are talking a lot about defunding the police right now, but we are paying into an entire legal system money that could be better used," said Constantine.

Now, he has given a little more insight to how that money could be reallocated.

Ending youth detention by 2025

The first, and perhaps more dramatic goal, is to end youth detention at the Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center. The center cost $242 million dollars to develop, spending which widely opposed by activists, and only opened its doors in February of this year. When the pandemic began, 42 youths were in detention there, now just 19 are and depending on when the pandemic ends, that number could be down to zero.

Wednesday Constantine said the new plan is to repurpose the building into a space for therapeutic and community use, as part of the county's greater commitment to rehabilitation and crime reduction, rather than punishment. The executive says the county has the capital to make that possible, and that the change in approach may even save King County money in the long term.

"Three out of every four dollars in the county general fund is spent on courts and crime and corrections," said Constantine.

As outlined in the initial announcement, the county says detention will begin being phased out as soon as possible, and done no later than 2025. Some anti-jail groups have argued that the process should be faster, and should also abolish in-home electronic monitoring.

When pressed on the issue, Constantine said he believed electronic monitoring could remain a useful alternative to detention, but that King County's solutions to these issues would need to come from its community.

"We can do better, and we have a community that wants to support that approach," said Constantine. "This is the beginning of that process, and it will be shaped by the community."

Broadly, the decision has been celebrated by activists online. For years groups like the No New Youth Jail Coalition have been pushing to end youth detention in King County, which they see as an outdated form of criminal justice which disproportionately harms young Black and minority residents. Between January and June of 2017, 45 percent of the youth detained in King County were Black, despite only making up 8 percent of the county's youth— something Constantine touched on in his address Wednesday.

"I understand there is a deeply embedded bias, racial bias isn't every aspect of the legal system," said the executive. "That is true not just of the criminal legal system but of all other systems in our society."

On phasing out the King County Correctional Facility

Meanwhile, the second proposal to shut down the jail in downtown Seattle is also moving ahead. The county executive says he plans to submit a proposal for the upcoming budget which would start closing the jail in phases once the pandemic ends.

"We must reimagine King County's downtown Seattle campus," said Constantine.

The current King County Correctional Facility was finished in 1986. Constantine says the building is now "decrepit," outdated and far too expensive to maintain and operate much longer.

When the facility closes the remaining inmates will not all just be shipped to the detention center in Kent. Part of Constantine's proposal is to use the phase out to focus on prevention, rehabilitation and reduction, so there is significantly less need for jail space in King County overall. At the beginning of the pandemic, around 1900 adults were incarcerated in King County. Now, after freeing many low-risk prisoners because of the pandemic, just 1300 adults remain in detention, a number Constantine says he believes will remain the new normal.

Finally, addressing those who question the logic and safety of cutting down on incarceration in King County and Washington, Constantine says the current system simply isn't working and that it's beyond time to try something new, that can be restorative instead of just punitive.

"To be sure there are those who will find reasons why we shouldn't pursue these goals, and bureaucratic inertia has a strong hold, but I am intent on shifting public dollars away from systems that can not deliver what we need," said the executive.

The King County Prosecutor's Office also issued a statement Wednesday to assuage concerns that these changes could have a negative impact on community safety.

"Even with the reduction in jail numbers since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office has still gone to court to address felony crimes and violent individuals – and we will continue to do so," said Casey McNerthney, a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office.

The letter goes on to say that the office has been working hard in recent years to take on issues of systemic racism within the criminal justice system, and that they look forward to discussing the proposal with Executive Constantine in the near future.