This story is published as part of U.S. Democracy Day and the Utah College Media Collaborative, a cross-campus project bringing together emerging journalists from Salt Lake Community College, the University of Utah, Utah State University and Utah Tech University.
This election season, Salt Lake County residents will see a public safety bond on their ballots. It’s a part of the county’s action plan to tackle homelessness, behavioral health challenges and reforms to the criminal justice system.
If approved, the county will increase property taxes to fund the $507 million bond. This will go towards developing new public safety facilities, increasing mental health and substance abuse services and expanding the existing county jail.
Arlyn Bradshaw, member of the Salt Lake County Council, said it is an “improvement to address the needs and the gaps that are within our system.”
The Justice and Accountability Center
One of the bond’s major points would fund the building of a Justice and Accountability Center. This would be a lower-security center meant for low-level offenders. These are individuals whose crimes do not warrant a long-term jail stay and who police might not be equipped to handle.
Katherine Fife, the associate deputy mayor for Salt Lake County, says low-level offenders are often people who have multiple recurring encounters with law enforcement.
“Many people who we all call the police on are people who are in a crisis, whether they are under the influence or having a mental health crisis,” Fife said. “And what we want to do is make sure they’re stabilized, make sure they’re connected with the right supports and then they can be on the path to success and self-sufficiency.”
The Justice and Accountability Center aims to connect individuals with resources to keep them out of jail. It’ll do this by focusing services on mental health and substance use treatment, connection to housing opportunities and job training and employment resources.
Bradshaw refers to these measures to reduce recidivism as putting an end to the “revolving door.”
The county jail is currently the largest mental health treatment facility in the county. The county reports that 25% of the jail’s inmates are unhoused. Stays are 3.5 times longer for individuals experiencing homelessness.
Operation of the county jail costs $136 per inmate per day. Daily operations for the Justice and Accountability Center would cost an estimated $75.
Fife says the bond and the Center would support Salt Lake County’s Human Services, Homelessness and Criminal Justice Action Plan vision that “homelessness is brief, rare and non-recurring.”
“We want to make sure that people can get connected to resources, but we also want to make sure that those who are committing crimes, those who need to be held accountable, are accountable, and that our justice system can do that,” Fife said.
County Jail System Revamp
Salt Lake County currently has two correctional facilities: the Salt Lake County Metro Jail and the Oxbow Jail Facility. The public safety bond proposes the decommissioning of outdated facilities at Oxbow and the expansion of the Metro Jail.
The new Adult Detention Center would also have an expanded mental health unit and a community re-entry stepdown unit to prepare individuals to successfully come back into society.
“We’re really, really helping to get them connected,” Fife said. “So when they are released, they have a place to go, they have the support they need, they have the work that they need, they have a job so that they can pay for their housing that they have.”
One of Fife’s biggest critiques for the current state of the county jails is a lack of sufficient space.
“Our Salt Lake County jail has not had one new jail bed added since 2001. So, we have been operating within our current capacity with a growing population in our county,” Fife said. “We need to make sure that we can address the population growth.”
These new developments along with a rebuild of the Oxbow capacity would add an estimated 812 beds to the county jail system.
However, it is this same addition of beds on which George Chapman of Salt Lake City based his opposing argument for the bond. Chapman said the bond does not do enough to add more beds to the county jail system and criticizes the failure to prioritize adequate staffing of the jail and sheriff’s office.
“Creating more jail beds and filling them with career criminals should happen before more homeless shelters or Justice Centers are built. This bond may also decrease the available jail beds temporarily while a bigger jail is constructed,” Chapman wrote in his opposing argument.
If approved, Salt Lake County will increase property taxes to fund the bond. While the bond would be issued over five years, the proposed plan estimates a 25-year period to raise the money. Based on the county’s reported average value of primary residences, the county estimates a monthly tax increase of $4.91 for residential properties and $8.93 for business properties would result from the bond.
Elle Crossley reported and wrote this story as a journalism student with The Daily Utah Chronicle at the University of Utah. Her article is published as part of the Utah College Media Collaborative, a statewide project in partnership with Amplify Utah.
