St. Lucie County Jail System

Detention Center Population Report

For Year: 2007

Prepared for the

Public Safety Coordinating Council

2300 Virginia Avenue Ft. Pierce, FL. 34982

The Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator Mark Godwin

1 Purpose

The Detention process in St. Lucie County is a complex operation, Laws, court decisions, Federal and State rules, accreditation standards and the U.S. Constitution all combine to provide operational mandates.

To assist in this responsibility, the office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator has established an ongoing review and assessment of the volumes of statistical data the sheriff’s office maintains.

This material offers a road map of sorts, sharing complied information to assist in the operational planning for the future.

The Criminal Justice Coordinator will continue to monitor the jail population to keep you informed of any significant trends or changes in the underlying population.

This report contains specific, detailed information regarding the incarcerated population of the St. Lucie County Detention Center.

2 Table of Contents

Methodology……………………………….. 4

Population/Booking/Release Summary... 5

Miscellaneous Population Data…………. 6

ALOS 6 ALOS from Booking/Bond 6 Offense Types of Booked Inmates 6 Released Types 6

Age Profile 7 Race Profile 7 Inmates by Charge Status 7 Inmates Housed Over 365 days 7

VOP Population Report…………….……. 8

Total VOP Population 8 Misdemeanor Population 8 Felony Population 8 Breakdown by New/Technical Only 8

Court Performance Metrics……… 9

Clearance Rate 9 Certainty of Trial Dates 9

3 Methodology

This is the 2007 edition of the St. Lucie County Jail System Annual Population Report. The report contains statistics for the year 2007. In future releases, an additional section will be created to include historical statistics and annual averages covering prior years.

Most of the data for the statistics come from two sources.

1: Daily population report 2: Data entered into the Sheriff’s Office computer jail inmate tracking system

Consequently, all of the statistics presented here are based on actual counts rather than on sampling, thus eliminating sampling errors. Perhaps the three most important sources of data are booking, releasing and midnight headcounts.

A booking is the admission of a new inmate into the jail. If an inmate is fully released and then comes back to jail, that counts as a new booking. Hence when the number of bookings is given for a year, the same inmate will be counted as many times as he/she is booked. An inmate may similarly be released several times in a given period.

A daily population count records every inmate in jail exactly once at the time of the count. An inmate count is conducted every day at midnight and it is used as the official figure for the number of inmates in jail on the preceding day.

Two conventions employed in this report involving inmates with multiple charges should be noted. One is that, when citing statistics about inmate charges, the most serious charge is used. The other is that inmates with multiple charges are counted as sentenced if, and only if, they are sentenced on every charge.

4 Population/Booking/Release Summary

3 Year Population Comparison

1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year 2007 1393 1369 1412 1452 1509 1570 1583 1490 1383 1312 1289 1252 1418 2006 1324 1348 1347 1313 1342 1340 1320 1379 1394 1361 1338 1346 1346 2005 1034 1060 1110 1158 1166 1185 1194 1211 1297 1297 1332 1297 1195

This graph shows the average daily jail population by month for the period 2005 through 2007.

3 Year Release Comparison

1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2007 1355 1187 1409 1225 1460 1543 1600 1779 1383 1328 1277 1358 2006 1230 1151 1349 1204 1409 1312 1099 1248 1324 1247 1195 1195 2005 1125 1230 1219 1273 1211 1187 1255 1372 1311 1232 1140 1281

This graph shows the cumulative level of inmates released by month for the period 2005 through 2007.  Total 2007 Released Inmates – 16,904 Total 2006 Released Inmates - 14,963 Total 2005 Released Inmates – 14,836

3 Year Booking Comparison

1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2007 1427 1279 1340 1247 1468 1541 1585 1697 1292 1284 1216 1367 2006 1287 1181 1274 1216 1372 1326 1112 1318 1288 1230 1184 1219 2005 1153 1237 1271 1252 1265 1203 1242 1415 1323 1324 1137 1241

This graph shows the cumulative level of inmates booked by month for the period 2005 through 2007.  Total 2007 Booked Inmates – 16,743 Total 2006 Booked Inmates – 15007 Total 2005 Booked Inmates - 15063

5 Source: SLC monthly classification report

6 This graph shows that 48% of the inmate population is black, followed by 45% white and 7% Hispanic.

Source: SLC monthly classification report

7 Fel Tech – Felony technical only; Fel New – Felony new charges, Misd Tech – Misdemeanor technical only , Misd New – Misdemeanor new charges

 Clearance Rates: the number of outgoing cases as a percentage of the number of incoming cases.  Measures whether the court is keeping up with its incoming caseload.  The above 2 charts show the rate for 2007 (75%) compared to 2006 (60%). Rates below the “blue” target line indicate the backlog is continuing to grow.

Certainty of Trial Dates Graph

This graph provides a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of calendaring and continuance practices.