Spokane County’s efforts to reduce overcrowding and racial disparities at its aging jail have earned an additional investment of $1.75 million from the MacArthur Foundation.
The decision was announced Wednesday afternoon by Jacqueline van Wormer, the county’s criminal justice administrator and an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at WSU.
“I think we can spend the day sort of celebrating,” van Wormer said in an interview before the meeting. “But then the really hard work begins.”
Spokane County and the city of Spokane have pledged an additional $1.2 million over the next three years to pursue programs intended to slash the number of inmates in the jail, which has been in operation since 1986. The MacArthur Foundation, which has been working with city and county officials since the announcement of a first round of funding in May, has set goals of reducing the jail population by 17 percent through 2018, and by 21 percent by 2019.
The jail’s average daily population was 965 inmates last year, according to Spokane County figures.
The money pledged by the MacArthur Foundation and the city and the county will be used to revamp the county’s Pre-Trial Services Department, which will use a revised risk assessment tool developed by Zach Hamilton, also a WSU assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology, to determine who should be booked into jail and who should be diverted to other social programs.
An additional eight staff members will be hired in Pre-Trial Services, and the jail also will employ three mental health professionals to screen potential inmates as they’re brought into custody, van Wormer said.