Cabarrus Cheap Seats

The following is a letter from the area judges, district attorney, and sheriff regarding Pretrial Electronic House Arrest.

Robert Carruth, Chair of the Board of Commissioners for Cabarrus County
Commissioner Coy Privette
Commissioner Robert Freeman
Commissioner Carolyn Carpenter
Commissioner Joni Juba 

Re: Pretrial Electronic House Arrest and Cabarrus County Jail

Dear Commissioners:
For several years our Cabarrus County jail facility has been overcrowded. A new county jail is in the planning and design stages, but the progress on the jail has been slower than we would have wished.

Several voices in the community have recently called for us to adopt a form of house arrest and electronic surveillance for defendants awaiting trial, rather than set bonds and keep those defendants who cannot post bond in our county jail to await trial. The proponents of this plan have asserted that such a program would save money and reduce jail overcrowding. They cite other counties and other programs which have placed persons on Electronic House Arrest.

Each of the undersigned, which constitute every elected Judge and the elected Sheriff and the elected District Attorney for Cabarrus County, completely disagree that such a program would save any money or reduce jail overcrowding in Cabarrus County. We UNANIMOUSLY and completely oppose Electronic House Arrest for pretrial release for Cabarrus County as a means of avoiding or delaying the construction of adequate jail space. Such a program would NOT be an effective means for Cabarrus County to save money, nor reduce jail overcrowding, nor protect the community.

We, as court officials in Cabarrus County, concluded long ago that we could not ignore the overcrowding problem. For that reason, the jail and the sheriffs department, the district attorney’s office, the defense bar and the judges have worked co-operatively for over a year to add cases onto the docket early when it becomes clear that the cases are for guilty pleas or for some other prompt disposition. The jail officials carefully review the cases, but obviously they must exercise great care to see that their actions constitute neither the giving of legal advice nor coercion of inmates to make decisions against their will.

The jail officials regularly review their population to bring these cases to the attention of the District Attorney and the defense counsel (when applicable), and the paperwork is initiated and expedited to add the cases to the docket promptly. This review is an ongoing process, and has resulted in dozens of cases being expedited.

However, this expedited process is now being disrupted by the transport of prisoners to and from the Alamance County jail. On an average weekday when both District Criminal Court and Superior Criminal Court are in session, there are 25 to 50 prisoners who are transported between the jail and various criminal and civil courtrooms. During the second week of January alone, there were several cases where the matters were delayed to another court date due to the unavailability of a defendant who was in Alamance County jail. Furthermore, several other cases that might have been added on for expedited disposition could not be addressed because the defendant was not available for transport at that time. As a result, we are already experiencing a disruption in our criminal court process due to transportation issues from off-site jails.

Further, in child support cases, we have been more careful to review alternatives other than jail. The jail population problem has caused us to reduce the number of persons committed to the jail for failing to pay support for their minor children. We have made increasing use of community service and other options, but it is impossible for us to eliminate entirely the need for incarceration for chronic or repeated nonpayment of child support. It is possible that we have already reduced incarceration to the extent that the overall percentage of child support collections has dropped, but at this time we have no other option.

In part because of the jail crowding, local law enforcement officers often do not arrest defendants for many criminal offenses. Instead they just issue paper citations or criminal summons for significant misdemeanor crimes–even for cases such as drug offenses, thefts, and cases involving repeat offenders–because they know that the jail overcrowding is severe. Many of these repeat offenders would be in custody under bond today if there were jail space to hold them.

In short, out of nearly 250 people in jail awaiting trial, no more than 1 to 5 individuals in the Cabarrus County jail at any given time would typically qualify for pretrial Electronic House Arrest in the programs that are conducted in the other counties. The Cabarrus County defendants who would qualify for Electronic House Arrest in the other counties are already released here on citations, criminal summons, or upon their written promise to appear in court, because we do not have the space to permit us to require a bond. Thus, a pretrial Electronic House Arrest program may affect some people who are now already released because there is no room in the jail. However, pretrial Electronic House Arrest will NOT make any significant reduction in the Cabarrus County jail population. Furthermore, the establishment of pretrial Electronic House Arrest for Cabarrus County will require substantial additional funding for equipment, monitoring, and a minimum of 5 to 10 additional Sheriffs personnel to provide constant 24-hour a day, 7-day a week follow-up supervision to see that these few people are ALWAYS where they are supposed to be.

Some of the same people suggesting pretrial Electronic House Arrest have also suggested that the jail overcrowding is somehow the result of undue delays in the Cabarrus County courts. We agree that sometimes cases are not resolved as promptly as we would all like. The courts suffer from a continuing lack of additional resources and the lack of personnel committed to the courts by our state government over the last three years. We have experienced an increase in case filings in some areas approaching 30% over the last three years.

In spite of those challenges, the latest statewide case aging statistics show that our county is among the top three (out of 39 districts statewide) in virtually every overall category of district court case management. Furthermore, in the area of non-motor vehicle criminal cases, our Cabarrus County District Court ranks first in the state among the districts in average age of pending cases.

As a result, jail overcrowding is not merely a threat to the jailers and the prisoners, but is becoming an increasing threat to the safety of the community as well. Whatever the benefits of such a program may be in other counties, instituting a pretrial Electronic House Arrest program will NOT address the basic problem of jail overcrowding in Cabarrus County. Such a program will NOT do anything to make our community safer. In fact, such a program seems designed to place additional dangerous persons at large in our communities.

Thank you for your continuing attention to this matter.

Signed,

William G. Hamby, Chief District Court Judge
W. Eriwin Spainhour, Resident Superior Court Judge
Brad Riley, Sheriff
Roxann Vaneekhoven, District Attorney, Judicial District 19-A
Donna H. Johnson, District Court Judge
Michael G. Knox, District Court Judge
Martin B. McGee, District Court Judge