Monroe County jail notebook: Population still routinely over functional capacity

Monroe County’s jail population stood at 236 on Saturday (Sept. 19), which is one less than a week ago, but still more than the ACLU’s version of the jail’s functional capacity, which is 229.

The mid-week number dipped as low as 221 on Thursday morning, before book-ins on Thursday and Friday night pushed the total to 236 by Saturday morning

Two weeks ago, Monroe County’s GIS team rolled out a new jail data dashboard. 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.

Ten days into that span, the 10-day rolling average was about 254. The most recent rolling 10-day average, on Saturday (Sept. 12) was about 232, or 18 less than at the start of The B Square’s reports.

It’s still 3 more than the 229 that the ACLU gives as the jail’s functional capacity in its federal lawsuit, which it filed in July on behalf of jail inmates.

Monroe County sheriff Ruben Marté has given a lower figure for functional capacity. 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, 125 of them were still there on Sept. 19. That means 122, or almost half, of the people who were in jail at the start of the period, had left by the end.

At the same time, 111 people who arrived after July 21 were still incarcerated on Sept. 19. The 125 people who were present at both endpoints, together with those 111 later arrivals, account for the current population of 236.

That comparison still does not capture people who arrived after July 21 and then left before Sept. 19. A total of at least 585 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 61-day period, the average daily population was about 239. The highest count was 264 on July 31. The lowest was 216 on Aug. 28.

[Monroe County Jail Timeline]