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Wayne Co. released hundreds of inmates for COVID. Was public safety compromised?

The Detroit News - 3/1/2022

Mar. 1—Detroit — Prisoners released early from the Wayne County Jail amid COVID-19 concerns over a 20-month period committed at least 15 violent crimes, according to a study and a review of jail records by The Detroit News.

Overall, the 339 people released early were charged with 96 offenses. More than half of those were for probation violations, and some of the most serious alleged crimes occurred after the convict's natural sentence would have ended.

Law enforcement and judicial officials said the statistics, combined with a reported virus infection rate in the county's jails of 3.9%, showed they did well with balancing health concerns and public safety, while some community activists say the statistics are nothing to celebrate.

"You never like to see any circumstance where you release someone and they commit another offense, particularly when someone is seriously harmed," Chief Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny said.

"But given what we were tasked with, I think we did a good job overall in terms of protecting the community, while also minimizing risk to inmates."

Still, Kenneth Reed, director of the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, noted: "Even if there were only a few violent crimes committed by this population, we can't be jumping up and down celebrating because we have to be sensitive to the victims and their families."

In February 2021, sheriff's officials installed a $300,000 air purification system in the three facilities that comprise the jail which they said would kill 99% of the COVID virus. Kenny said the system and the release of COVID vaccines that weren't available at the beginning of the pandemic have reduced the need to release inmates.

There were 1,401 inmates in Wayne County Monday, 55 of whom had tested positive for COVID, Kenny said.

Inmates are tested when they're booked and six days later, after a five-day quarantine that begins upon admission, which follows the current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, said Wayne County Sheriff's spokeswoman Erika Erickson, as well as after a possible exposure.

The panel that decided on the discharges, which included prosecutors, jail officials, mental health experts and others, has not met since November and has no plans to meet through February, Kenny said.

"Now, we would only look at cases if we were alerted by the jail's medical unit," he said.

According to a study released Feb. 7 by the Wayne State University Center for Behavioral Health and Justice and a review of jail data, 28% of the inmates who were released as part of the COVID program were rebooked into the county jail system.

The Wayne State study focused on inmates who were released and rebooked through June 2021. The data jail officials provided to The News contains information until January 2022.

The low recidivism rate among the inmates released under the COVID protocol supports the argument for bail reform, said Allison Kriger, whose law firm LaRene & Kriger represented Wayne County Jail inmates in a May 2020 class-action federal lawsuit seeking their release during the pandemic.

"I think this shows that detention and bonds are overused, and the concerns about inmates getting out of jail and committing new crimes are overblown," Kriger said.

"Jail detention should only be used for a small group of people who can't provide a reasonable assurance that they'll appear (in court), or to protect the community," said Kriger, whose lawsuit was dismissed in May 2021.

But Reed said bail reform is "a tightrope" that balances the rights of the victims against the unfairness of a suspect "sitting in jail waiting on a trial only because they don't have the money for bail."

"We can't say because this specific population didn't get out of jail and commit more crimes we should blow up the entire bail system, but some reform does need to happen," Reed said.

The 15 violent crimes allegedly committed by inmates after their administrative releases include one murder, two rapes, two felonious assaults, two assaults with intent to commit murder and six allegations of domestic violence.

Many of the violent crimes occurred months after the defendants' jail sentences had expired, Kenny said.

"They would have been out of jail even if we hadn't granted them administrative releases because they would have served out their sentences," said Kenny, who co-wrote the Wayne State study.

In the murder case, 30-year-old Deneko Childs was charged in connection with a Feb. 21, 2021, fatal shooting outside a Highland Park party store. He was released from the Wayne County Jail on April 30, 2020, after serving three months of a nine-month jail sentence following a guilty plea for drug possession.

If he had not been released for COVID, Childs' jail sentence would have ended in September 2020, five months before the shooting.

Tyler Cole, 30, allegedly sexually assaulted three females, including two pre-teens, in July 2021, less than four months after being released from the jail, where he was serving a 90-day sentence for attempted breaking and entering.

Cole, who had also been incarcerated in 2011 for twice failing to register as a sex offender following his 2004 criminal sexual assault conviction as a minor, was remanded to the Wayne County Jail. He is awaiting a Feb. 23 hearing on first- and fourth-degree criminal sexual assault charges.

Kenny said in an email: "These alleged crimes occurred over two months after his jail sentence maximum. The assaults allegedly occurred while on probation, but not during an early release."

Although the Wayne State study does not identify the first-degree murder and first-degree criminal sexual assault defendants cited in their report, Childs and Cole are the only inmates granted COVID-related releases who were charged with those crimes during the study period of March 2020 to June 2021.

Another man, Derrick Graham, was charged with two crimes — breaking and entering and first-degree criminal sexual conduct — following his COVID administrative release on April 23, 2020. At that time, he had served six months of a one-year jail sentence for organized retail crime.

Graham was charged with breaking and entering on Nov. 4, 2020, nearly a month after his original jail sentence would have been up. He was charged with criminal sexual conduct on July 1, 2021, but the alleged incident happened in 2019, a year before his administrative release.

Wayne State researchers were given name-redacted data and were not aware of the inmates' original sentences.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, who served on the panel, said she and the other panelists were careful about which inmates to release.

"Our work has been methodical, thoughtful and inclusive," Worthy said. "We seek that delicate balance between protecting the victims and the public from people that are dangerous to themselves and others and protecting the jail population and staff from exposure to COVID."

Allen Cox, president of the Wayne County Sheriffs Deputies Union, is lobbying for deputies to receive hazard pay from federal COVID funds because he said the virus still poses a threat.

There were six inmates and one Sheriff's Office employee sidelined Friday after testing positive for COVID, Erickson said.

Five members of the Wayne County Sheriffs Office have died after contracting COVID, including former Sheriff Benny Napoleon, who died Dec. 17, 2020, after having been on a ventilator for weeks.

Wayne State's Center for Behavioral Health and Justice Project Manager Nanci Hambrick, who co-wrote the study, said the authors tried to determine whether public safety was jeopardized by the inmate releases.

"That's what we were trying to figure out: Did we do any harm by getting people out of the jail who were at risk?" Hambrick said. "We tried to look at the nuances, keeping in mind that we were dealing with COVID and trying to keep the jail population low while avoiding risk to the community.

Through June 2021, the researchers said 251 inmates had been released, with 64 of them rebooked into the jail, 56 of whom were charged with nonviolent offenses including 34 probation violations. There were eight alleged violent crimes.

There were an additional 88 inmates released since July 1, with 32 being rebooked, 15 for probation violations, according to the jail records obtained by The News.

"If someone is picked up on just a technical probation violation, they didn't really harm anyone," Hambrick said.

Average jail recidivism rates in Michigan have never been calculated, said Hambrick, who has collected data from 26 other jails across the state.

But according to the Michigan Department of Corrections, the recidivism rate in Michigan prisons last year hit its lowest level in history at 26.7%, similar to the rate of 28% rebooked jail inmates who were granted COVID-related administrative releases.

Wayne County Jail officials began granting administrative jail releases, or AJRs, to nonviolent offenders in 1991 to address overcrowding. The Wayne State study found: "COVID AJRs were granted to people of color at a rate of 59%, which is much higher than the percentage of Traditional AJRs received by people of color at a rate of 43%.

"People of color were more likely to receive a COVID AJR than a Traditional AJR, while White people were more likely to receive a Traditional AJR than a COVID AJR," the report said.

At the outset of the pandemic, Kenny began regularly meeting via conference call with Worthy, jail officials, mental health professionals and defense attorneys to decide which inmates were eligible for release.

"While ultimately the decision fell to me whether the releases would be granted, we brought all the appropriate stakeholders to the table, and we went over these people individual by individual, and because we were using CDC guidelines, we took the advice of people from the jail's medical staff," Kenny said.

"We also had attorneys representing the inmates. We had mental health professionals. We weren't just winging it."

Among other findings in the Center for Behavioral Health and Justice Study:

— Over half (53%) of the inmates rebooked were due to probation violations; most of the others involved alleged property or drug-related offenses.

— More than 61,762 jail bookings were recorded during the study period of March 2020 to June 2021; less than 1% of those resulted in administrative releases.

— Of those who were granted administrative release, 32% were identified as mental health consumers in the jail.

The population in the county's jails has remained below its average in the last full year since the pandemic. According to a 2020 Vera Institute study, the average daily jail population in Wayne County from July 2018 to June 30, 2019, was 1,701. County officials reported there were 1,381 Wayne County jail inmates on March 10, 2020, the day the first COVID cases were reported in Michigan, 17 fewer inmates than the 1,398 inmates on Friday.

"We took a lot of time deciding which inmates to release, and I think the statistics bear out that this was a thoughtful process," Kenny said.

ghunter@detroitnews.com

(313) 222-2134

Twitter: @GeorgeHunter_DN

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