SPOKANE, Wash. — Spokane County officials revealed Monday that the county jail is not at capacity, despite decades of claims about overcrowding.
“We’ve been hearing for months, and if not years, that the jail has been struggling at capacity issues,” said City Council Member Zack Zappone.
An inside look at the Spokane County Jail shows it does have plenty of empty cells. But staff say the risk of filling up remains a daily concern.
“We can become full really quickly in just one weekend. We can go from having 100 extra beds to being full,” said Chief Don Hooper, chief of detention services for Spokane County.
Chief Hooper said the jail could have around 45 inmates coming in and out on a daily basis. However, the bigger problem the detention center is dealing with, rather than capacity, is medical problems people are coming in with.
“We have a number of overdoses in the course of a year. And so, we’re administering Narcan, almost, if not daily, weekly. And with that comes a hospital transport,” Hooper said.
With hospital transports, there are fewer staff to maintain order. This can lead to what is called a ‘red light status.’
“No city police officer, no valley police officer, no county deputy can bring anybody in until we come off a red light,” Hooper said.
The jail entered red light status 23 times in the last month, totaling 125 hours.
That frequency could be due to overcrowding, but the chief of detention services says, most of the time, it happens because staff are responding to an emergency situation like a medical emergency, a fight, or an overdose.
Zappone said that whether the issue is staffing or capacity, community concern prevails. “I think we at the city should have the right policies in place that allow us the tools for our officers to engage, but nothing’s going to change until the county steps up and becomes a partner on addressing those concerns.”
Spokane County Prosecutor Preston McCollam shared a statement with KXLY on the matter saying: “While we do have capacity, what is clear and undisputed is Spokane County needs a regional justice center that adequately meets the needs of the community for both confinement and treatment and post-conviction supervision.”
You can read Zappone’s full statement on this here.
You can find the Spokane County Detention Services Dashboard that is updated daily with jail capacity numbers here.
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