Alachua County Commission votes to eliminate discretionary jail fees

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – During the evening portion of the May 23 Alachua County Commission meeting, the board took the next step toward a new jail phone contract and eliminated discretionary jail fees.

Scope of services for jail phone contract

Kevin Smith, director of the County’s IT Department, said jail phone calls are now being billed at 12 cents per minute (the fee required by Securus) instead of 21 cents, and free phone calls will begin October 1. The County is working on an RFP for phone services, with the goal of having a signed contract by October. However, Smith said that if Securus is not selected, there is a buy-out of $175,000 because the County signed a five-year contract with Securus in 2020. 

The scope of services for the RFP requires the contractor to provide the option of deploying free basic community tablets; the contractor will also be able to offer personal rental tablets with premium content. It also requires a video visitation call system. The pricing for phone calls can be either on a per-minute basis, a fixed monthly cost based on the average daily inmate population, or an annual yearly cost as a lump sum.

Chair Anna Prizzia pointed out that there is likely to be a significant lead time for any new contractor to get all the equipment ready, and during that time, the buy-out will continue to decrease.

Discretionary jail fees

The board then discussed discretionary jail fees, which average about $195,000 in revenue per year for the County to offset jail costs; other fees are set by statute, so the County cannot unilaterally change them. Ron Akins, Administrative Support Manager for Court Services, said that although there is a long list of fees, only the subsistence fee and clinic copayment are currently collected.

Commissioner Mary Alford made a motion to no longer collect the subsistence fee, which offset $156,000 in jail costs in FY22, and eliminate all the fees that are not being collected. Prizzia said, “That’s $156,000 out of the pockets of poor people,” and Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler added, “And a lot of these people haven’t even been charged yet, right?”

Cornell said he didn’t have a problem eliminating all the discretionary fees “if, in fact, that’s a best practice–it seems like $4 a day is not a lot, but maybe it is.” Wheeler said, “Especially if you’ve not been charged.”

Alford changed her motion to eliminate all the discretionary fees, and Wheeler seconded the motion. 

Alford commented that many jails charge a nominal fee for clinic visits “to keep frivolous clinic visits from happening, so it’s one of the things that I did think about, but on the other hand, I also know that there are people that don’t go to the clinic because they’re worried about paying it. I know $5 doesn’t sound like a lot… but it also adds up very quickly, for somebody unemployed.”

Prizzia said that although the County doesn’t send past-due accounts to collections, they could, and “it ends up being something that follows you around.”

Commissioner Chuck Chestnut said the amount the fees generate is “not a lot of money” compared to the $42 million jail budget. “It doesn’t help,” he added.

A woman named Kimber from Florida Prisoner Solidarity said during public comment, “The best practice would be to remove all fees… The people that are left behind in jail after First Appearance are the poorest, the people that can’t afford bond, so why are you charging even more?” She said the County should work with the State to have no monetary bond at all. Regarding people going to the clinic “just to get out of their cell, which, like, makes sense–it’s a very small outlier, probably, and I wouldn’t put in best practice to create policies on small outliers… I think you have to be really cautious on how you set policy that gets enforced by guards and COs, and how they like to–it’s a power manipulative move that they can use to different intentions than you all have.”

Cornell asked Kimber whether there are other jails that don’t charge a subsistence fee, and she responded, “I don’t care if there’s other jails that don’t charge it. It’s best practice to not charge it… The only people sitting in the jail are the poorest of the poor, that’s my point.”

Chestnut said in his experience, families can’t afford the “outrageous” transportation and deputy fees to go to funerals; however, Akins said that fee has not been collected in recent years.

The motion passed unanimously. 

Research on best practices

County Attorney Sylvia Torres passed commissioners a resolution with a fee schedule amendment, and Cornell responded with a motion to ask staff to bring back “best practices of other counties, as far as what they are doing, specifically Miami-Dade, to reduce fees,” ask staff “to contact the Sheriff to communicate that we’ve eliminated the discretionary fees tonight and ask that he get back to us on the status of the commissary fees,” and adopt the resolution that Torres handed out, which was not included in the agenda backup. Wheeler seconded the motion.

Prizzia said the Sheriff had been scheduled to be at the meeting but “had something come up,” but she had asked him to come back on June 13 to address jail personnel and commissary fees. She said Major Dorian Keith, Director of the Jail, had said the jail already provides soap and a kit to every inmate with “basic self-care supplies” including soap, toothbrush, and toothpaste. 

Prizzia asked Cornell whether he also wanted information about fees like Court Services fees, and he confirmed that he did. 

Alford suggested an addition to the motion, asking staff to find out if other counties have Citizen Oversight Boards for their jails “because I feel like if we were to have a Citizen Oversight Board, we could get the real information about what is happening in the jail.” Cornell agreed to add that to the motion but said he just wanted the information and didn’t necessarily want an oversight board. He said the board should be careful about “the signals we send with our words” because the Sheriff could decide to give the jail back to the County, “and I don’t want the jail back.”

During public comment, Tamara Robbins said that when Sheriff Clovis Watson says, “I’m here to do the will of the board,” that’s a “distraction.” She said he’s an elected official who does not answer to the County Commission, “so when he does this… tell him to bring specific information about… how many kits is he distributing every day? How often does an inmate get them? How big are they? How long do they last?… When you give Sheriff Watson a lot of latitude, he will take it, beyond… You’ve got to be very specific.”

Prizzia added to the motion a request for a community engagement component to the Court Services development item that staff is working on, and Cornell agreed.

Alford said the Sheriff had been in office for two years, “and I think I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve seen him in a meeting… There’s only so many chances he gets, in my opinion. And if we’re not getting the information from the Sheriff that we ask for in a timely way and getting correct information about what’s being distributed to inmates and whether or not they have access to medical care or access to attend a funeral if they would like to, or all the other things that we see no fees collected for, maybe because they’re not getting those services…,” then an advisory board would be a way to get that information. Cornell and Alford agreed that should be a policy discussion. Prizzia said the County Commission is the actual oversight board and that the Sheriff is a “service provider” who has a contract with the County to run the jail. Cornell removed the oversight board from his motion. 

The motion passed unanimously.