Cities exceeded the number of municipal inmates they were allowed to send to the Adams County Jail during the first year of a cap set in response to budget cuts, triggering the creation of at least 16 bills for fees owed.
But only three bills were paid, four were never sent and several others were voided, according to Adams County records.
Sheriff Doug Darr — who said it was county officials, not him, who enacted the daily fee as a penalty for exceeding the cap — turned over billing to the county after just two months.
“We were unable to get any information concerning payment of the fees and discovered that the county was not collecting them,” Darr said in a written response to questions from The Denver Post. “I was no longer willing to devote the staff time and effort to the project if the county was not going to be in compliance with the resolution.”
The commissioners officially lifted the fee in October, but the cap remains in place.
Although some city records don’t match, county records show bills were canceled and a refund was issued to cities that had each paid one bill: Arvada, Aurora and Commerce City.
The cap, recommended by the sheriff and approved by the previous board of commissioners in late 2011, was a result of budget cuts that closed three housing units, reducing jail beds by 192, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
The cap was supposed to help “reduce the municipal inmate population of nonviolent offenders and provide the municipalities with some flexibility to determine their incarceration priorities for more serious offenders,” Darr said.
But officials from the cities have argued that the cap has negative effects on safety in their communities.
“It is a shame that the county is no longer providing this core service. The jail cap is now affecting quality of life and public safety in all the Adams County cities,” Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said in a written statement.
A deadline for a new plan to ease jail staffing shortages while raising the cap has already been pushed back twice. The Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee in Adams County is expected to make recommendations on a new plan Monday.
Across the county, cities have made their own changes to reduce the number of municipal inmates in the jail.
Some of those offenders affected include people sentenced to jail time for loitering, failure to pay fines, and for dog-tag violations.
Thornton, for example, said the city has been issuing lower bonds, and judges are sentencing offenders to less jail time.
Commerce City and Thornton offenders are now also more likely to get alternative sentences such as in-home monitoring or work release.
“Commerce City is committed to ensuring the public’s safety, which is why the municipal criminals sent to jail are individuals that — based on their record and arrest circumstances — need to be incarcerated,” city spokeswoman Michelle Halstead said.
But initially, Thornton was processing some municipal inmates as county inmates — where criminal charges were similar enough — which excluded them from counting toward the cap, according to a statement provided by the city.
Darr said he believes the cap did have an impact on the prison population, “because the lowest level nonviolent offenders are not in the jail.”
He said the fee, however, “didn’t have any impact because, for the most part, the cities weren’t invoiced and were not required to pay the fees.”
Commerce City found one invoice from 2012, but has no record of ever paying it, despite the county’s records showing it was paid.
Arvada records confirm a payment of $135 in January 2012.
Aurora paid one bill, in February 2012 for $3,060. Immediately after making that payment, Aurora contracted to begin sending all of its prisoners to the Denver County Jail instead. Denver charges Aurora $52 per day, per inmate. Adams County charged $45.
Aurora officials said they tried to pay to house all of their municipal inmates at Adams County but were told they had to adhere to the cap. Contracting with Denver was less complicated.
In 2012, Aurora paid Denver $33,488 for 644 bed days, and in 2013 has already paid $27,040 for 520 bed days.
Several other county jails in Colorado also charge their own municipalities to house municipal inmates, though most that do so are in rural areas.
Adams County has 30 beds free for municipal offenders. The 31st inmate in the door triggers the cap system. All domestic-violence inmates are jailed without charge.
Yesenia Robles: 303-954-1372, yrobles@denverpost.com or
