Monroe County jail notebook: Population at or below ACLU capacity mark for 3 days, county rolls out new data dashboard
Monroe County’s jail population fell to 227 Saturday, marking three straight days at or below the ACLU’s 229-person functional-capacity figure. A new county dashboard now provides daily jail data. Since July 21, the population has fallen by 20, with substantial inmate turnover.
Monroe County’s jail population stood at 227 on Saturday (Sept. 5), which made for a three-day span when the total population of the jail was at or below the ACLU’s version of the jail’s function capacity, which is 229.
The week started at 237 and ticked up to 239 the next day before starting a slight downward trend.
This past week also marked the rollout of a new jail data dashboard from Monroe County’s GIS team. The dashboard is updated routinely, which means Monroe County residents don’t need to wait for weekly updates from a news outlet. The dashboard breaks down the demographic profile of inmates, and provides a statistical breakdown of the types of offenses inmates are charged with.
The B Square has tracked the numbers starting on July 21, when the jail held 247 people. By Sept. 5, the population had fallen by 20 to 2027.
Ten days into that span, the 10-day rolling average was about 254. The most recent rolling 10-day average, on Saturday (Sept. 5) was about 229.
That’s the figure (229) that the ACLU gives the jail’s functional capacity in its federal lawsuit that it filed in July on behalf of jail inmates.
Monroe County sheriff Ruben Marté has given a lower figure. His July overcrowding report started with 294 reported beds, subtracted housing that he said cannot be treated as general-population space, leaving 233 available general-housing beds. Applying the same 80% principle yields a functional capacity of 186.
The difference between the two snapshots at the start and the end of the period The B Square has tracked does not capture the turnover in the jail during that period. Of the 247 people who were there on July 21, 139 of them were still there on Sept. 5. That means 108, or almost 44% of the people who were in jail at the start of the period, had left by the end.
At the same time, 88 people who arrived after July 21 were still incarcerated on Sept. 5. The 139 people who were present at both endpoints, together with those 88 later arrivals, account for the current population of 227.
That comparison still does not capture people who arrived after July 21 and then left again before Sept. 5. A total of at least 446 people departed the jail during that span. It’s “at least” because some people booked into jail don’t stay in jail long enough to appear in the daily population report. An example of that is the man who was arrested on a charge of street camping on Aug. 7, who was released about a half hour later. Among those who departed during the time The B Square has tracked the numbers, the median length of stay was 2 days.
Over the full 47-day period, the average daily population was about 240. The highest count was 264 on July 31. The lowest was 216 on Aug. 28.
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