SEATTLE — King County wants to contract with a regionally owned jail in Des Moines to take about 50 people who would normally be held in county jails, as it struggles with increasing jail populations and “unprecedented” staff shortages at its own jails in downtown Seattle and Kent.
The proposal, from County Executive Dow Constantine, would have the county send people to the South Correctional Entity, which is owned by the cities of Auburn, Burien, Des Moines, Renton, SeaTac and Tukwila.
Constantine has asked the Metropolitan King County Council to move quickly with the goal of approving the measure by the end of the month. The county would spend about $1.75 million a year to house an average of 50 people daily at the South King County jail.
The County Council on Tuesday forwarded the bill out of committee, but without recommending that it pass, expressing skepticism and wanting more time to consider the issue. They will consider it again in two weeks. Council members said they would try to balance the request to quickly address the issues at the jail with concerns such as that those housed there would be farther from court appearances and attorneys.
The King County jail system lost about a fifth of its corrections officers between 2020 and fall 2022, and it has struggled to hire officers even as it has added new incentives to try to recruit more guards.
The overall population at King County’s two jails fell from over 1,900 to about 1,300 during the pandemic, as the county moved to increase alternatives to incarceration. But since then, the jail population has crept back up to about 1,600.
The Kent jail remains minimally occupied. But last year, the average daily population at the downtown Seattle jail, which Constantine has called obsolete and previously pledged to close, spiked above the pre-pandemic count.
In 2019, the highest average daily population count in the downtown Seattle jail was 1,208 people, while Kent reached a peak of 874 people. As of Monday, 1,243 people were being held at the downtown Seattle jail, while 265 people were incarcerated in Kent.
Understaffing and an increased population in the downtown Seattle jail has led to deteriorated conditions both for the jail’s workers and people incarcerated there. Corrections staff have reported burnout because of mandatory overtime, and fewer staff are around to facilitate visitation, activities and time outside cells. As a result, incarcerated people and their attorneys say people can languish in their cells in isolation for 23 hours per day.
Last month, the ACLU of Washington sued King County and Constantine over conditions at the Seattle jail, where lawyers say understaffing has jeopardized people’s health and safety. The lawsuit claims the county has violated a longstanding legal agreement to protect access to court hearings and health care.
The proposal to shift some of the King County Jail population to the South Correctional Entity, also known as SCORE, follows a deadly year for the Seattle jail. Six people died while in custody of the downtown jail in 2022, or after being transferred from jail to a hospital. Four of them died by suicide — a rate at least four times the national pre-pandemic average for jails and the highest number of annual suicides in the King County jail system in at least a decade.
Some of the conditions caused by understaffing and pandemic restrictions — like isolation and limited access to visitation — can create higher suicide risk, experts say.
SCORE does not offer in-person visitation. The jail in downtown Seattle restored in-person visitation late last year after it had been shut down for more than two-and-a-half years due to the pandemic.
In his State of the County address Tuesday, Constantine pointed to one reason for crowding issues at the jail: the state of Washington’s severe backlog in providing mental health services to people deemed not competent to stand trial.
The state is supposed to transfer people out of jail within a week and provide mental health services if they’re found not competent to stand trial.
King County currently has about 100 people in its jails who can’t be tried and who don’t have access to court-ordered services, Constantine said. Some have been there up to 10 months.
Last fall, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office took legal action against the state, arguing that the Department of Social and Health Services has failed to provide timely mental health services to people in jail.
“The impacts of this backlog stand in the way of our work to reimagine the criminal legal system,” Constantine said.
