Davidson, Shelby counties have high incarceration rates

The study looks at the 2006 jail populations of the 50 counties with the largest jails. Davidson County had the second-highest per capita jail population, below only Philadelphia, with 596 people in jail for every 100,000 residents. Shelby County ranked third with 594.

The study, called “Jailing Communities: The Impact of Jail Expansion and Effective Public Safety Strategies,” was written by the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington D.C. nonprofit organization that promotes alternatives to incarceration.

It found that jail populations are up all over the country, with populations increasing by 21 percent between 2001 and 2006. According to the study, the increase does not correspond with an increase in crime.

Instead, the study blames factors like more local jails housing federal or state prison inmates, fewer arrestees being released to await trial and high bails.

“The same structural problems that explain (high jail incarceration rates) in any location explain it in Nashville and Memphis,” said Vanderbilt University sociology and criminology professor Mary Karpos. “The difference is many areas have one or two of these factors, but Memphis and Nashville have many if not all of them.”

Several of the factors cited for increasing jail populations are long-term trends, like changes to the mental health system that have left some people without treatment and more likely to end up in jail. Sixty percent of the jail population suffers from a mental health disorder, according to the study, compared to 10.6 percent of the general population.

Changes in policing practices across the country also mean more people are being arrested for low-level drug offenses and what are sometimes called “quality of life crimes” often aimed at the poor and homeless ‘ such as loitering and begging.

Immigration-related arrests also are up across the country. Between 1995 and 2006, the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees held in local jails for immigration offenses increased by more than 500 percent.

A majority of the people being held in jails nationally, 62 percent in 2006, have not been convicted of a crime. They are being held pretrial, where once many of them would have been released to await trail. Others are unable to post bail because of increasing bail amounts.

“We have seen that there have been increases in the last two years in bonds that have been set for offenses that previously had gone much lower, which does require people to stay in jail longer,” Shelby County Sheriff Mark Luttrell told The Commercial Appeal. “We’ve seen our average length of stay in the jail has gone up over the last three years by about two days on average.”