Today, many counties are considering expanding their jails or building new jails to alleviate overcrowding or supposedly increasing revenue without considering the negative consequences of jail expansion, especially on the county budget, as jails represent a tremendous cost to local governments.  Local governments experienced a 347% increase in criminal justice spending between 1982 and 2003, including a 519% increase in corrections spending.  In 2004, local governments spent a staggering $97 billion on criminal justice, over $19 billion of which went to corrections alone.  By way of comparison, during the same time period local governments spent just $8.7 billion on libraries and only $28 billion on higher education.

                The most recent numbers available for calculating the average cost per person in jail put the average daily cost per person in jail at $70.00 per day.  If this one person were to be in jail for one year, he or she would cost the county a minimum of over $22,000.00.  Comparatively, the average annual cost of community-based substance abuse treatment is $2,100.00, and intensive supervision is $3,200.00 per person.

                With more than 200,000 people being admitted to jail in one week in this country, the costs of housing each of these inmates for just one day is a staggering burden on the taxpayers.  Assuming that each of these admissions remains in jail for just one day, a situation that is highly unlikely, the cost to counties for this one week would total over $12 million.  Multiple this number by 52 weeks and the costs to house our growing number of county inmates across America is readily apparent. 

                The argument for alternative sentencing by the criminal courts is strengthened when considering the daily costs associated with housing offenders in county jails.  With the availability of tethering and day-reporting the ability to order effective house arrest of nonviolent offenders becomes a reasonable alternative to jail.

                Mandatory counseling for substance abuse and domestic violence combined with day-reporting and intensive supervision by probation officers presents other alternatives to ensure public safety. 

                Community service, work crew and recycle centers provide daily supervision by corrections without the costs associated with housing prisoners in the county jail.

                All of the alternative sentencing options discussed above are readily available to residents of Sanilac County.  All of these sentencing alternatives are nearly cost free to the county tax payers and shift most if not all of the costs of punishment to the offender.

               The 73A District Court currently employs a full time probation officer and a full time community services director.  The Sanilac County Jail has a day-reporting program in place along with some of the municipal police departments around the county.  The County has a recycling center up and running.  We have numerous county and private counseling agencies and services within ½ mile of the Courthouse to service the offenders.  The County already has a well established Anger Management Program in place.

                Within a 15 minute drive of Sandusky is a well established and professionally operated tether monitoring business with GPS capabilities which is rarely if ever utilized by the District Court.   The cost to tether a person runs between $10 and $14 day, which is paid entirely by the wrongdoer.  I understand the service can monitor the exact location of anyone at anytime who has been tethered, including any violations of Court ordered restrictions imposed upon the person.

               With the availability of these alternatives it is time we start using their services to benefit the tax payers.

               If elected as your new District Judge I promise to use these sentencing alternatives to help reduce our in-county need for jail beds which in turn can may be rented to the US Marshall Service to help generate pure profit for the County.  We already have the beds and corrections staff.  We already house, feed and care for inmates to fill the current beds as it is, so why not use existing beds to generate the greatest amount of net profit for the county rather than constructing a larger county jail which we cannot afford. 

              All of this is within reach and could be easily accomplished with the cooperation of the judges, probation departments and jail staff.

      November 4th