Push on to tether

rfonger@flintjournal.com • 810.766.6317

GENESEE COUNTY - Sheriff Robert J. Pickell has a suggestion to ease chronic overcrowding in the county jail:

Release more inmates on electronic tethers, potentially freeing up hundreds of beds.

"I do have a major concern about our jail," Pickell told the county Board of Commissioners on Wednesday. "We're just going to explode."

The jail is regularly overcrowded - as it was Wednesday with 635 inmates in a facility with a capacity of 580 - and the sheriff predicts things to get worse when the city lockup is expected to open around-the-clock next week.

Pickell estimated that as many as 300 inmates could be released from jail if they had money to post a bond, but are stranded in jail until their cases are resolved.

Judges have cooperated with efforts to reduce overcrowding, Pickell said, but have been slow to use tethers. Just 28 people were on the tether program Wednesday, he said.

Genesee County narrowly avoided an overcrowding emergency in late March and county board Chairman Archie Bailey has said he will appoint a task force to make recommendations on overcrowding.

An overcrowding emergency is triggered when the jail exceeds its legal capacity for seven consecutive days - something that hasn't happened since Pickell took over the office more than six years ago.

If an emergency is declared, it forces the early release of inmates until the population drops to a mandated level below the legal capacity.

Flint District Chief Judge Nathaniel C. Perry III said he believes tethers will have to be used regularly as the city jail opens. The opening will put even more inmates in the county jail, officials have said, because the lockup allows police to get those they arrest directly into court without releasing them.

"We are in a situation with overcrowding where we have to find some other alternative method," Perry said.

Tethers can play a part in reducing jail inmates, said 67th District Chief Judge Mark C. McCabe, but he noted that there still will be a cost to the county to tether inmates who can't pay for their own monitoring.

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