Is Buncombe County planning to spend millions of dollars to build a new jail?
The problem is, we don’t know. Public discussion on the issue seems to indicate the majority of county commissioners oppose Sheriff Van Duncan’s proposal to build a new detention center — and yet, according to the Mountain Xpress, as recently as a few months ago, the sheriff was still pitching the board on the idea that more construction is the way to go [see http://avl.mx/477].
But extra jail space is not a solution to rising jail populations for many reasons — a fact which the board itself recognized back in February when it embraced a different vision for addressing the growing number of mental health and substance-use-related issues in the county [see http://avl.mx/4i5].
This vision is “diversion,” which moves people away from incarceration and instead offers treatment, social services and access to an array of resources available through the county and its community partnerships.
The board allocated funds for the creation of a comprehensive new diversion program and facility called the Justice Resource Center and hired a coordinator tasked with finding new tools for diversion and coordinating provision of services. The Justice Resource Center officially opened [in November], meaning that this strategy can now begin in earnest.
Importantly, when the board voted unanimously to create the center, it did so with the explicit goal of avoiding construction of a new detention center. At that time, even the sheriff publicly acknowledged the desirability of this approach — so why is he now attempting to undercut this solution by continuing to push for construction of a new jail?
Perhaps the sheriff would say that his proposal is a “pragmatic” one in case diversion alone can’t get results. But this would misrepresent the nature of these different approaches as being complementary. They aren’t. Expansion is inherently at odds with a commitment to reframing how we think about and respond to so-called “crime,” which is at the heart of what will make diversion effective in the long run. Moreover, we know from decades of prison expansion in this country that once facilities have been constructed, they will be used, even when crime rates drop. The two approaches are simply irreconcilable.
From all available evidence, the main factors behind the rising jail population are:
1. Deepening substance abuse and mental health crises.
2. Increasing economic inequality and precariousness.
3. Intensifying criminalization and harassment of poor people and people of color by law enforcement and others in the criminal justice system.
The board’s embrace of diversion is a laudable attempt to address the first of these factors by providing care for substance abuse and mental illness rather than doling out punishment.
We have good reason to believe that such a “health and human services” approach could significantly reduce numbers in the jail, since the vast majority of people held there were arrested for the very things diversion was put in place to target. For example, figures compiled by the county suggest that 70 percent of the jail population is involved in substance abuse, and the number of people at the jail being monitored for withdrawal increased by 30 percent between 2015 and 2016.
The sheriff, in contrast, is asking us to invest yet more of our finite resources in the same failed strategy that got us where we are today. This is not speculation; the data provided by the sheriff in his presentation to the board showed that even if a new facility were constructed, overcrowding would again become an issue within 10 years, requiring yet more construction down the line. In this context, how can anyone honestly consider building a new jail to be a “solution”?
Buncombe County residents deserve answers. Commissioners should make their position on this issue known, clearly and publicly, at the earliest possible date, so that we no longer have to worry about whether this disastrous proposal is still looming on the horizon.
— Julie Schneyer
Asheville
How about a new drug and alcohol treatment center instead of a new and bigger jail ? Also, stop arresting and prosecuting people for marijuana.
LOL, the system is around to make money, create problems, and not solve anything. Witness Wanda Green still free even though she is for all intents and purposes guilty of stealing money. Van Duncan shares in the same corruption and of course is still free to propose new jails the he himself should be locked up in. When he and Green spoke about public money and the misuse of it, the implicated him then and there as knowing she was misusing it. His silence on the matter makes him an accessory to it.
The one’s in charge of local government should actually be the ones behind bars.
Wanda Green still free even though she is for all intents and purposes guilty of stealing money
Yeah, enough with that whole “trial” “judge” “conviction”, and “sentence” liberal nonsense. We all know that justice dispensed by anonymous online sockpuppet is the only real justice.
Van Duncan shares in the same corruption and of course is still free to propose new jails the he himself should be locked up in.
Did you miss the point of the story? Jail’s getting too crowded? Not enough room for new inmates? Hellooooo?
The one’s in charge of local government should actually be the ones behind bars.
https://www.fbi.gov/tips
…or if you don’t like that one, oddly enough the FBI has two different ‘tip’ websites. ‘Two chairs, no waiting’, as they say:
https://tips.fbi.gov/
Ten years from now the self-declared champion of the working stiff will be arguing that school buses shouldn’t get new windshield wipers because Wanda Greene. It’s tiresome already.
Most people in the county jail are being held awaiting trial, not serving a sentence. How many of those could be elsewhere if non-custodial facilities existed? How many are there because they couldn’t make bail?
“Van Duncan shares in the same corruption and of course is still free to propose new jails the he himself should be locked up in. ”
Have you called the FBI tip line yet? Of course not. All bluster and not action.
There were more treatment centers for the mentally ill in Asheville and they went under.
A main problem I have seen from working as a nurse in the local ER’s, Copestone and the jail is lack of education and/ or skills that are obtainable for the lower income class, that would be necessary to make a decent living. Substance abuse, mainly illegal substances such as hero, designer drugs, crack and meth are running rampant in the Asheville area. From working in mens max security prison recently, I realized a fair amount of the inmates were very funny and likable characters. I realized that when alot of those guys were cleaning and sober their personalities went back to natural, by not being influenced by subtsances.
What would happen to the drugged out and psychotic people in Asheville if there were no place to contain them?
Another problem is the gang world out there… usually low income and dealing with and in substances…
Asheville’s behemoth public housing and it’s evil enabler, the unqualified ‘Executive Director’
Gene Bell contribute greatly to the rampant drug and criminal activity in the AVL …yet he is held up
on pedestal after pedestal in this joke of town…public housing blights the WHOLE CITY!