Agenda 08-30-2012 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Commissioner Foushee arrived at 7:13 PM. Commissioner Yuhasz asked about the Mental Health Court and how it is funded. Judge Buckner said that it is funded by the Department of Health and Human Resources. Commissioner Yuhasz asked if this funding was going to be terminated. Judge Buckner said that it is such a small problem that the State has indicated that it will continue to sustain it. Commissioner Hemminger asked Judge Buckner what he was looking for in a new jail. Judge Buckner said that most of the time they are trying to deal with dockets of hundreds of cases, so it is critical to the operation of the court to get people into queue. In the design, there should be the capacity to meet with more people that are incarcerated. Chair Pelissier asked Judge Buckner to comment on the effort of improving the homelessness population. Judge Buckner said that they have been trying to keep up with this population and coordinate services when these individuals are in court. This has been successful. Commissioner Jacobs suggested looking at who the County will be building the prison for and what other resources/programs are there. He asked Judge Buckner what he would like to see the Board of County Commissioners do. Judge Buckner said that the State mandates are on the prison population. He said that it is worth a look. He said that a lot of other people need to weigh in on this conversation. Commissioner Jacobs said that if the County was proactive, this would be a good time to bring together stakeholders to look at other alternatives to decrease the prison population. Chair Pelissier agreed with Commissioner Jacobs. Sheriff Pendergrass said that daily it is an operation of manipulation to keep the numbers between 135-140 people each day. He said that he tries to keep the jail population at a number that is safe to manage. He said that there are over 600 people on probation in Orange County and at any given time, 5-30 will violate probation and come back to jail without notice. Many unpredictable factors in running a jail and they also never know at any given time how many female inmates they will have, which creates a problem too. He said that there has to be a new jail with a capacity of about 250 inmates. The old jail can be used for misdemeanors, etc. He said that there are 30-40 people that are continuously brought into jail off the streets from Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and they are street people. He said that it is like a revolving door, and there need to be other places for these people besides the jail. Commissioner McKee said that in the long run it will be imperative to look at a new facility and he liked the idea of looking at alternative means to treat these homeless people.