The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners held three public hearings on Feb. 26-27 & 29, 1996, allowing public input regarding a vote to be held May 21 on a huge new bond measure and levy to fund new jails. Portland NORML Director T.D. Miller, OCTA Chief Petitioner Paul Stanford and Portland NORML volunteer Phil Smith all spoke in opposition to the bonds and levy. Following is an edited version of Smith's evolving statement. Comments or links for the benefit of readers here are included in brackets with hypertext links. More information about the bond and levy vote has been added below.My name is Phil Smith. I'm a longtime Multnomah County resident and a volunteer for Portland NORML and the Drug Reform Coordination Network.
I think the people who have spoken here today [about libraries and foster care] have provided compelling testimony that the funding they seek is very important to our community.
Not one person has asked for more money for jails, but the bulk of the money in the bond vote May 21 would be wasted building yet more jail space for controlled-substance violators.
Most of the people sentenced to jail or prison for felonies in Multnomah County are drug offenders. The weekly tallies in The Oregonian, drawn from the county's own records, show the figure is more than 60 percent so far in 1996.
A large majority of these prisoners have no record of violence, abuse, or property crimes, and are not charged with such. It's probably true that a disproportionate number of real criminals enter the judicial system as a result of their drug abuse, but real criminals aren't the ones who tend to get sentenced to hard time. Drug offenders are.
Real criminals who abuse illegal drugs are so small a part of the larger drug-using population that targeting all drug users indiscriminately is a waste of resources that exacerbates all our problems.
The Oregonian reported Sunday that Portland police are solving just one-third of all violent crimes. Could that be in part because we're spending 60 percent of our resources on drug crimes, as the sentencing figures indicate?
According to the current standard reference, the preliminary 1994 government-funded National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, "The current illicit drug use rate ranged from 6.6 percent in the West region to 5.1 percent in the Northeast region." [This is for ages 12 and older, within the past month. Many if not most nongovernment experts put the figure at closer to 10 percent.] In Multnomah County, whose current population is 626,500 [according to the Center for Population Research and Census at PSU], 6.6 percent means 41,349 people. Discounting, say, a generous 20 percent to account for those age 11 and younger [More precise estimates were presented in Portland NORML's April 4 weekly news release], the number of illegal drug users in Multnomah County would be 33,079. [Multnomah County now has a court-ordered ceiling of 1,371 jail beds, plus 480 more if the May 21 bond measure passes, for a potential 1,851. Given these assumptions, there are currently 24.127 substance offenders in Multnomah County for every jail cell. With 1,851 cells there would be 17.87 substance offenders for each bed.]
I think it's clear we cannot incarcerate our way out of our drug problem. What may not be clear is that putting people in jail for drugs is counterproductive. For example, we arrest at most one in 20 drug traffickers, which only supports drug prices and entices more people into the market.
The Netherlands, Vancouver, B.C., and other places around the globe no longer incarcerate people for simple drug possession, yet they suffer from much less crime and social dysfunction than here.
I would first ask the commissioners to consider defunding some or all drug arrests, prosecutions and incarcerations, or at least to offer the voters several options for defunding some or all of the following categories of drug offenders. I will rank these from the least risky option to the most.
My second proposal is that Multnomah County begin to account for what the taxpayers are actually spending and getting now and how they might concentrate limited resources where they will reduce more harm. What percentage of our public safety budget just goes to pot? I don't believe anyone knows. How many hours do police and courts spend on the average drug case? Could we obviate the need for new jails entirely just by defunding certain drug prosecutions?
In my opinion, support for current policy would crumble if the public realized its real costs and benefits. Support will certainly erode when the public learns the costs of running these new jails. So just getting the numbers before the public may be the best way to begin diverting limited resources where they will do more good.
These are federal and state laws. If the feds and state can't and won't pay for them, why should the county?
[End of speech]
The Oregonian got it right in a staff editorial ironically titled "Keep jail measure lean" (Feb. 29, p. B10), in which it observed that the $79 million for new jail bonds ($134 million with interest) would pay for 480 new jail beds, drug treatment (for 150 inmates) and "expansion of existing jails, new alcohol and drug centers and the sheriff's computer upgrading." Those of you who have acquiesced to the war on drugs should note: that's $164,583.33 per jail cell, or $279,166.66 with interest. That's almost three times what the legislature paid for new prison spaces a month ago, $94.2 million for 1,486 new cells, or $63,391 per cell.Beverly SteinMeanwhile, abused kids are riding around in cop cars for hours at a time because there's no place to take them.
At the current rate, building jail cells for all the illegal-drug users in Multnomah County, using the assumptions above, would cost $164,583.33 multiplied by 33,079, or $5,444,251.90 - about $5.4 billion, or $9.2 billion with interest. Just building spaces for all the traffickers, usually estimated at 10 percent of users, would cost $540 million, or $923 million with interest.
Most important, no one has even mentioned what the annual maintenance costs of these new jails will be. Unless county commissioners have another source of funding in mind, they should be on record now where those maintenance costs will come from. There will be a separate levy for money to operate the new jails. It would replace an expiring levy, but with a large 50 percent increase, raising $24.4 million the first year (1996-1997), $31.6 million the second year and $33.8 million the third year, for a total of $89.8 million. But that will not come close to covering 1,486 inmates at an average cost of $75 a day (a figure used by one commissioner), or $27,375 per year per cell, which would come to $40,679,250 per year, or more than $40 million. That's $16 million more than the county would receive from the levy in 1996-1997. The county would still be short-changed $9 million the second year and almost $7 million the third year. And there will be other costs associated with 480 new jail beds: more judges, prosecutors, probation and other pipeline personnel. Multnomah County also runs several other penal institutions, including a work-release program, etc.
Taxpayers who have been acquiescing to the war on some drugs are about to begin paying through the nose for their apathy with sharply escalating taxes, increased violence and property crime, and social services that will continue to decline in order to fund counterproductive drug policies. Voters should show their support for a re-examination of Multnomah County's drug policy by just saying "no" to more jails for drug offenders in the May 21 bond vote. Taxpayers would also do well to write or call the commissioners to express their opposition to these unexamined policies, and to get them to go on record how much it will really cost to operate these new jails and whose ox will be gored in order to pay for them. Here are some addresses, phone and fax numbers and e-mail links:
Dan Saltzman
District 1
Multnomah County Commissioner
Portland Building
Room 1500
1120 SW Fifth Ave.
Portland, OR 97204
Tel. (503) 248-5220
Fax: (503) 248-5440
Gary Hansen
District 2
Multnomah County Commissioner
Portland Building
Room 1500
1120 SW Fifth Ave.
Portland, OR 97204
Tel. (503) 248-5219
Fax: (503) 248-5262
E-mail: gdhansen@teleport.com
Web page: http://www.multnomah.lib.or.us/cc/ds2/
Tanya Collier
District 3
Multnomah County Commissioner
Portland Building
Room 1500
1120 SW Fifth Ave.
Portland, OR 97204
Tel. (503) 248-5217
Fax: (503) 248-5262
E-mail: Tanya_Collier@pub.multnomah.lib.or.us
Web page: http://www.multnomah.lib.or.us/cc/ds3/
Sharron Kelley
District 4
Multnomah County Commissioner
Portland Building
Room 1500
1120 SW Fifth Ave.
Portland, OR 97204
Tel. (503) 248-5213
Fax: (503) 248-5262
E-mail: comklly@transport.com
Web page: http://www.transport.com/~comklly/
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