The Washington jail system is experiencing a fatality disaster. This is likely one of the uncomfortable however unavoidable truths we confronted as co-chairs of a legislative activity drive charged with finding out our state’s jail system and recommending modifications to assist make jails safer. Though we come from a wide range of backgrounds, together with jail administration, civil rights advocacy, and expertise being incarcerated in jail, all of us agree that there have to be unbiased oversight of Washington’s jails.
Greater than 130,000 individuals had been booked right into a Washington jail in 2022, and but there may be startlingly little details about what happens as soon as they get there. Washington has no statewide workplace chargeable for monitoring jails and reporting knowledge to the general public. Among the solely data out there pertains to deaths in custody.
What we discovered demonstrates that fast motion is required. Even accounting for Washington’s inhabitants development, the Washington jail demise charge almost tripled between 2000 and 2019 — a rise 16 occasions that of the nationwide common. Outpacing different states, Washington now has the fourth-highest charge of jail deaths within the nation. This can not proceed.
Reversing the pattern of jail deaths, and fixing the various different points dealing with our jails, could require some troublesome coverage choices. Nonetheless, unbiased oversight of jails is a crucial first step towards a safer and extra humane jail system. Impartial oversight is a demonstrated technique of enhancing transparency and accountability each in Washington and throughout the nation. By our depend, not less than 25 states have a statewide workplace chargeable for overseeing jails, and all of them have a decrease charge of jail deaths than Washington.
Nearer to house, Washington has not too long ago established or expanded unbiased oversight of state prisons, police, colleges, and different entities. Jails are the notable exception to oversight of establishments which are chargeable for the well being and security of tens of 1000’s of individuals.
An unbiased jail oversight workplace can monitor circumstances in jails, meet with employees and incarcerated individuals, report on circumstances that they’ve witnessed firsthand, and even talk issues earlier than individuals are harm. A jail oversight workplace may accumulate and report knowledge, serving to directors, policymakers, and the general public perceive our jail system and advocate for data-driven options to jail deaths and different issues regarding jails.
Oversight isn’t just for the advantage of incarcerated individuals. Our activity drive acknowledged that an oversight workplace can accomplice with overburdened jail techniques to supply much-needed help and suggestions, together with sensible insurance policies that promote employees security and cut back recidivism.
Washington state briefly had a statewide jail oversight workplace from 1981-87, which america Division of Justice as soon as trumpeted as a mannequin for techniques across the nation. Sadly, the Legislature eradicated statewide jail oversight over the objections of jail directors, civil rights teams, and others.
Impartial oversight will promote public belief and data-driven decision-making in a subject that has for too lengthy operated with out the advantage of transparency. We ask the Legislature to enact into regulation our activity drive’s advice to revive unbiased oversight of our state’s metropolis, county, and regional jails. Folks’s lives rely upon it.
