PREVIEW: Will jailing more people fix downtown Seattle? Lisa Daugaard weighs in.

[00:00:00] Hi Seattle Nice listeners, this is a free preview of our interview with criminal justice reformer and MacArthur Genius grant winner Lisa Daugaard. If you want to hear the full episode, head on over to patreon.com. Enjoy the show.

[00:00:14] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice with Publicola's Erica C Barnett. Hi Erica. Hello. And political consultant Sandeep Kaushik. Hi Sandeep. Hey David. And our special guest this week, Seattle's most influential criminal justice reform advocate Lisa Daugaard.

[00:00:42] You know in part because she helped create the law enforcement assisted diversion program also known as LEED. Lisa Daugaard was also awarded a MacArthur Genius award for her work and according to Wikipedia started in at the University of Washington at the age of 12. Is that true?

[00:00:58] Hi Lisa Daugaard. Portions of that are I think if I am the most influential criminal justice reform advocate in Seattle we might be in trouble but. But what about starting at... Did you really start at the age of 12? I did.

[00:01:12] I did but I took my time in finishing let's just say so it just gave me some extra time to take a meandering road through higher education. I don't mean to call anyone out but just for the edification of our listeners Sandeep

[00:01:26] or Erica did either of you start college at the age of 12? I did not. I think we both started at 17. We did both started at 17 thus proving that Lisa Daugaard is five years smarter than we are. Well I think we should probably. At minimum.

[00:01:40] Focus on how long it took you to get your degree because in my case that was quite a stretch. All right so Seattle Smartest podcast just got even smarter this week. This week the Seattle City Council said basically we need more jail space for people who commit misdemeanors.

[00:01:57] King County doesn't have enough. We're going to start looking elsewhere. Danny Westeney wrote about this in the Seattle Times basically saying the county and the city need to talk because this new council is all about law and order and

[00:02:09] the county's approach is still more on harm reduction as opposed to an emphasis on incarceration. I don't know if you saw that column but just in general Lisa Daugaard to sort of set the stage what do you think?

[00:02:21] Well on brand for me I don't agree with the framing of the question so I don't see the mayor or the city council saying that they need more jail space. I think that is not how they have identified the problem.

[00:02:35] What they're saying is that there are categories of offence that are not bookable at all and it's not necessarily a quest for more people in custody but the need to not meet a complete wall in occasional situations where the situation warrants in their view at least

[00:02:57] a short period of pretrial detention because that's what that is. The numbers bear that out. The jail census is very low and you could double it and still be well below the very low number that the city contracted with King County for.

[00:03:15] So I don't actually think this is a debate about more versus fewer people in jail. It's about the city's ability to determine when individuals in their view need to be booked into jail and to not be met with an administrative barrier to that decision.

[00:03:32] Can I push back on a little bit? I mean the city council this week was definitely saying that they want to lock more people up pretty unambiguously. You can say that the mayor and the city council are different parts of the city but you know

[00:03:45] and the mayor may not be saying that so explicitly but the city council certainly is and you know the sense that I got when they were talking about this contract with score was that they did feel that they were not getting their money's worth

[00:03:57] from these jail beds and that it was worth it to open up additional beds elsewhere. So I hear what you're saying Lisa but I'm just curious how you respond to what the city council was saying.

[00:04:08] And then if I could jump in before Lisa responds I mean just my way of context here right even what probably 10 years ago 2015 ish right. The city of Seattle on any given night probably had somewhere around 400 people

[00:04:23] in jail kind of during the Pete Holmes era kind of coming up to 2019 that probably dropped down to about 250 people on any given night. And then during the pandemic it's dropped to something like 80 right almost all of

[00:04:37] those people in some form of pretrial detention and it's sort of held there at 80 even though I think as Lisa is pointing out the city is paying for more than twice that many beds.

[00:04:49] And so anyway so it does seem like it's been a huge that's a really big decrease right in the last few years and the number of people that are spending any time in the King County jail because of crimes committed in the city of Seattle.

[00:05:08] I don't think that it makes things better to put people in jail pretrial like I don't think that changes behavior I don't think an overall improves circumstances on our streets. So I don't want to be misunderstood to be advocating you know to make

[00:05:26] individual situations better by putting people in jail. I don't think that happens but I don't think that's what this fight is about. I think first of all the council frustration over the contract does make sense to me because they are paying for more beds than they can use

[00:05:43] because the offenses on which Seattle might choose to book people are categorically ineligible for booking or they have been. The county is pointing out that the city had the opportunity to sort of negotiate exceptions to those booking rules and indeed we're seeing that

[00:06:02] in real time this week there was one and so it's probably true that the conversation could have been more active about renegotiating those barriers but the council's point was not we want to put 200 people in jail.

[00:06:16] The council's point was we have paid to put up to 200 people in jail but you won't let us because the crimes on which SPD would refer people are not eligible for booking. So all of those concerns seem reasonable. The conversation seems not particularly productive because both

[00:06:35] of those points seem like they could be handled but I'm not hearing a per se quest to put more people in jail. Well I want to just fact check one thing or just maybe clarify the point that you're making about these 200 beds.

[00:06:50] I mean what the county has told me what the jail has told me the DHAD is that yes the city is paying for almost 200 beds in the sense that that is the contract that was signed in 2017 the update but it has

[00:07:05] not been updated since then to their contention is that actually if the city had rebased the contract as it was supposed to between 2017 and now the amount that they are paying now would pay for far fewer beds because the cost has gone up so much.

[00:07:21] So I mean that might seem like a piddling point but I mean when you have Sarah Nelson the president of the city council saying she wants her money back the jail is telling me there's no money this is sort of

[00:07:32] a canard that they're banding about and saying it's true but there's just this money is sort of fictitious. Yeah I think it was a symbolic point not a literal go get your money. I think the point was that the city purchased or paid for some

[00:07:49] capacity and then whether you call it a policy reason or the county is saying it's not policy it's just sort of logistics and staffing which clearly is true well or maybe it's a blend of policy and logistics but in

[00:08:02] any event we can't provide booking for certain offenses which really just wasn't addressed in the original contract. I think these are marginal questions compared to the deeper question which is what is the right I mean where there's the right configuration the county isn't obligated outside of a contract

[00:08:23] to let the city of Seattle use its jail at all. The city may want to book a small number of people on misdemeanors that's you know far in excess of numbers at the height of mass incarceration and even

[00:08:36] during the prior city attorneys tenure like Sandy pointed out but once flexibility about what offenses can be booked and if that's true where can they go. We would like to see you know my organization purpose dignity action which

[00:08:57] is one of a few entities that the mayor's office has been talking to about options we surveyed our clients to find out what their experiences in jails have been and a notable finding I mean obviously nobody wants to go

[00:09:13] back to jail but we asked people to say if they were going back to jail on a low level offense of the available local options where would they feel best about ending up and for what reason and our clients responded

[00:09:28] very interestingly that the county's regional justice center in Kent both felt in general felt safer was safer and responded best to people with substance use issues. I thought that was important information. It's current based on recent experience and it's not about do you like jail or

[00:09:51] not like jail. It's about if jails are going to be used what is best. So with that information my hope is that the city in the county conversation will turn to securing whatever capacity is going to be needed at the RJC rather than other options which were

[00:10:12] criticized in that survey. That's interesting right because right now the city's been talking about or trying to working I think moving towards executing a contract with score right which is the South King County jail set up by these other cities

[00:10:27] as essentially a work around to this issue where they feel like they don't have access as you say Lisa for certain kinds of crimes to book people in the Seattle County Jail. Although just as I reported this week they have obtained that access for

[00:10:42] misdemeanor crimes committed downtown and they are arresting people right now and booking them. Yeah I thought that was a super interesting piece you wrote Erica you know and did indicate some kind of movement. I'm kind of curious what's behind that and what that means right but

[00:10:58] I did think that was a super interesting development that all of a sudden the county is at least on some downtown related crimes willing to to book folks there. But Lisa I think the point is I understand you're making is okay if

[00:11:11] we want to increase the number of people we're holding for Seattle related issues let's do it down at the county facility in Kent and not do this score contract. Is that what you're saying? Well and again just stressing I don't we don't want and I'm not

[00:11:28] hearing anybody say that they want to increase the number of people they want to increase the ability to book people under appropriate circumstances and on a case by case basis. So setting aside increased decrease if somebody needs to be booked they're

[00:11:43] saying we need to have an answer to that and yes so I think the question is could the RJC be part of the solution until now in the workgroup conversations about jail options the Department of Public Defense before they cease participating they eliminated that

[00:12:06] people held solely on Seattle Municipal Court offenses are almost always in the Seattle jail and that you know the logistics of bringing people into the courtroom have long made it make sense to have SMC defendants in the Seattle jail but that was before this era of

[00:12:26] staffing you know staffing emergency and real space constraints there so if the options are you know outside of Seattle the RJC and score are equidistant but the RJC has an established transportation arrangement again we have customer feedback that there are reasons

[00:12:47] to prefer that and so it seems worth exploring and maybe it's something that was thought to be off the table just because all things considered it's more convenient for Seattle defendants to be in Seattle but if that's off the table then perhaps RJC is a

[00:13:04] better solution than score. I mean you're a real peacemaker it seems like Lisa Dugard in terms of trying to bring folks together but just kind of I want to get all of your reactions back to my original question which is you really don't think that kind of ideological

[00:13:17] differences between the city and the county have anything to do with this that there aren't differences I mean I certainly see political differences between the direction that the county is going the direction the city has been going that West need kind of

[00:13:31] highlights in that column you know you're saying it's these are really kind of logistical questions and they really aren't ideological difference but there certainly there are political differences aren't they and I don't know I'm not you know directly reporting on this the way you know with the detail

[00:13:43] that Eric is I don't have the knowledge that any of you do but but just kind of what about that question you know how much of this is just procedural how much of it is yeah is ideological it's a really good question I think that these are originally

[00:13:57] logistical decisions that have turned into matters of you know policy and ideology there was a brief time when I worked for the King County Department of Public Defense and I sat in on you know the last generation's effort to address

[00:14:13] jail capacity issues and the executive convened an all department work group that with independently elected officials like the sheriff and the prosecutor and they were seeking to you know forestall a capacity crisis by having booking restrictions and at that time this is like back in 2015 those

[00:14:37] were just rejected out of hand couldn't possibly do that you know there were separation of powers issues there were just kind of it's just not workable of these other agencies told the executive and so those were those solutions were

[00:14:52] repeatedly taken off the table what changed that was COVID so you know during COVID because of transmissibility of the virus because of the lack of vaccines because of workforce issues everyone understood we needed to limit the flow of people into the jail and booking restrictions were

[00:15:11] introduced at that time for the first time for reasons that did not have to do with criminal justice philosophy but now that those sort of pressures that have receded it says if we've forgotten where that came from so now I'll switch from what I

[00:15:27] think they're doing to what you know I think we need to do I really do think that perhaps counterintuitively to some it is not helpful to absolutely prohibit things that are otherwise lawful these are offenses that you know legally

[00:15:46] can be subject to pretrial detention or booking they are criminal offenses and when you utterly block law enforcement or prosecutors ability to use the jail on a range of offenses what you do is build up sort of an appetite to do

[00:16:08] that because that then appears to be the cause of the problem right if we could just put people in jail for these offenses then conditions on our street would be better I don't think that's true I don't think putting people in jail for

[00:16:21] those offenses would fix conditions on our streets but I do understand that absolutely prohibiting that fosters that belief so in my opinion it is better to allow discretion and then have a system-wide conversation on that is not effective and it doesn't really make sense to

[00:16:38] do it except in very unusual circumstances but so is I mean it's not deep has made kind of similar points before I mean I think that what's going to happen since the average you know stay in jail is like just a little over a day

[00:16:52] I mean first of all taking people down to score or the RJC or anywhere is going to be a logistical nightmare I mean even if it is a county facility but more importantly I mean it seems like you put people in

[00:17:04] jail for a day they're out immediately and nothing changes and everything is the same on the street it sounds like you're sort of saying well then we can have a real conversation about what would work and I would love to

[00:17:15] live in that world but I feel like we live in a world where the political response is going to be well we got to be harsher because obviously you know they're just there the jail is just turning them around and letting

[00:17:26] them out and so we got to be harsher somehow I just don't think we're having a nuanced political conversation of the kind that you're that you're sort of hopeful for yeah I mean we are we are going that is the environment that we're sitting in right now

[00:17:39] no question about it I just think you know as a long time advocate of the position that we do not fix these problems by pushing people into the criminal legal system I have to recognize that empirically over the last several years we have

[00:17:56] not done a good service to that point of view by taking absolutist positions on you know taking away that option categorically what it does is it makes people long for a past or a future in which we could use those things and it would be effective

[00:18:16] the memory of the public and of commentators is very short people don't remember that we used to push people into the jail and courts on these offenses in huge numbers far exceeding what anyone is talking about today and the situation on the

[00:18:30] street was bad people don't remember that I don't think that by simply allowing discretionary booking on these offenses we're going to solve all of our public discourse problems but I definitely think that by precluding it we are fostering the illusion that that is an answer

[00:18:49] that will make all the difference and it's not healthy to get people in a position where they really really want to do that as well I honestly do think that concretely every so often there are factual situations where there is no

[00:19:04] better plan than a short term detention of a person that is a legitimate response and if you can't have that it it's like pouring gasoline on the fire then that is the story that invalidates a 99% true critique of using the jail and the courts for these issues.

[00:19:26] Lisa, for the benefit of our audience can you give us an example what is one of these sort of outlier situations you think what you know just so we you know I'm not even sure I typically under what you know understand what makes something

[00:19:41] some individual case worthy of actually even you know a short term stay in the pokey. Yeah I mean then I'm not I just want to know how much I love that phrase. I know. It's so dismissive of the circumstances of individual beings but anyway.

[00:20:00] Yeah I mean I think that the best example is just really really extreme property destruction spree that is clearly like you just can't have this you just can't have this but there's actually no intervention probably because the person is either extremely mentally ill or so

[00:20:24] if you will anti social that there's no like oh go have a social worker talk to this person you know reorient them and they're just there needs to be an interruption in the behavior pattern either until the point that the person is in a different mental state or

[00:20:41] because it's not legitimate to just let it go on those of us who believe that there should be minimal use of incarceration that the United States should not be the leader in which we still are right. We cannot be associated with situations where

[00:20:56] people just wreak havoc that is serious that they're doing serious harm and we just stand there like well it's just property destruction and you know is all property destruction in this category absolutely not is graffiti no is you know like somebody

[00:21:13] is mad and they hammer out a parking meter but they walk on and they calm that no but is a you know spree of breaking windows of like yeah I mean arguably yes and we someday we may have another thing that we do

[00:21:29] about this but right now we do not and you cannot have criminal justice reform be associated with that kind of serious impact that has no known stopping point or your delegitimizing the larger project. You're basically you're creating what you you know to some extent some of what we've

[00:21:50] seen in the city of Seattle is a kind of backlash politics right I mean we we haven't gotten to Giuliani time in Seattle or anywhere close to it but right there are historical examples New York City in the 70s and early 80s where you

[00:22:03] really did have a kind of massive sort of backlash politics that developed right around you know particularly issues of crime and then street disorder. Yeah I mean I don't I don't know that Giuliani was backlash because that was just all mass incarceration and

[00:22:19] there's just different flavors of mass incarceration but in New York City today right the the the bail reform laws in New York state and their repeal was absolutely catalyzed by these situations in the middle of okay so this person chronically does really

[00:22:38] harmful things and we have no choice but to just chronically turn them back into the street and it ends up making people feel like well I wish there was better alternatives but apparently we just need to use pre-trial detention so we don't generally need to use

[00:22:55] pre-trial detention but every so often we do and if you block that then you make people you wet their appetite. Hi I'm Katie Sewell host of the Bitter Sweet Life podcast where would you like to be one month before the presidential election this fall home

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[00:23:26] can be one of them email Bitter Sweet Life podcast at gmail.com and I'll send you the details and tell me you're from Seattle nice and I'll give you $400 off Bitter Sweet Life podcast at gmail.com but act fast registration ends Saturday August 3rd

[00:23:46] All right let's move on to a related but slightly different topic or new topic interim police chief Sue Rar floating the idea for some kind of third non-jail detention thing Erica you've been reporting on this what exactly is Sue Rar talking about?

[00:24:05] Okay that's going to be it for our preview of this special interview with criminal justice reformer Lisa Dugard. If you want to hear the rest of the interview where Lisa weighs in on the question of civil or involuntary commitment whether or not that's coming

[00:24:19] to Seattle and Washington state I was kind of surprised personally by her answer to that and also her opinion about a recent Seattle auditors report looking at place-based problem-solving approaches to addressing overdoses and drug related crimes just head on over to patreon.com slash Seattle nice to

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[00:24:52] right time and thanks to everybody so much for listening.