Cash bail is big business in Chatham County, but a Deep Center report shows the costs to taxpayers

Who makes up the Chatham County jail population? What is the cost savings of bail reform? Who profits most from bail?

A report released by Deep Center in partnership with the Vera Institute for Justice and the Southern Center for Human Rights attempts to answer these questions.

Wednesday night at Wesley Oak Church, representatives from all three organizations presented their findings, culled from an analysis conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice's In Our Backyard Initiative. The study was conducted from July 15, 2020 to October 1, 2021.

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The report noted Chatham County Detention Center’s rate of incarceration per capita when compared to the nation and the state remains “high.” Georgia is ranked fourth in the nation for incarcerations, and 1.13% of Savannah's population is incarcerated, according to the 2020 Census.

Chatham County jail population

The top three most common charges for admission into the Chatham County Detention Center are 1) violent crimes, such as homicide, aggravated assault, family violence and battery; 2) drug possession; and 3) theft/fraud/forgery.

• Of all the bookings during the study's time frame, probation violations (with no other charges) accounted for 313 bookings, representing 6.2% of all admissions. (Deep Center's own records showed a slightly higher number at 381 bookings.) Those booked for probation violation stayed in jail for an average of 54 days, costing Chatham County more than $1.2 million.

• Drug possessions made up 12.5 percent of all admissions and 8.3 percent of bed-days. A bed-day is defined as a typical 24-hour period in jail.

• 19 people spent a total of 199 days in jail charged with misdemeanor possession of less than 1 ounce of marijuana or drug-related objects.

• 47 people spent a total of 994 days in jail charged with possession of a schedule II, IV, or V drug (least severely regulated per Georgia's code). For context, drugs are separated into categories or schedules by their addictiveness. Schedule I drugs are considered the "most addictive." Here is the rest of the federal drug scheduling.

• Those charged with theft, fraud or forgery made up 11 percent of all admissions and 9.8% of bed-days.

The Cost: 1,000-plus days in Chatham County jail and what it's costing taxpayers

The cost to taxpayers per booking

People with one booking cost the Chatham County jail more than $16 million and made up more than 87% of the jail population.

People with two bookings cost the Chatham County jail more than $3 million and made up more than 10% of the population.

People with three or more bookings cost the Chatham County jail more than $650,000 and made up a little less than 2% of the population.

And: Two internal investigations reveal Creely's death in Chatham County jail 'preventable'

“When we think about what is the point of a jail, right? Is this really what we think it should be used for?” said Sarah Minion, an outreach associate with the Vera Institute's In Our Backyards Initiative, which is a research and grant program intended to address the jail population boom in small cities and rural areas. Deep Center, alongside Southern Center, are grant recipients and have been working together for more than two years.

Bail as big business

The report said, “In 2015, people in jail had a median annual income of $15,109 prior to their incarceration, which is less than half (48%) of the median for non-incarcerated people of similar ages.” That year, the report said, “families paid the bail industry an estimated $1.4 billion nationwide.”

The people most benefiting from high bail and bond are the bail bondsmen, said Devin Franklin, Movement Policy counsel for the Southern Center for Human Rights and a former Fulton County public defender.

Franklin said, “A detained person has to pay that company a percentage of the total bond and no matter whether they returned to trial or not, they don't get that money back.”

Todd Martin, a circuit public defender with the Eastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia, said there were two to three bail bond companies in Chatham County that profit the most.

The study did not name the three bail bond companies, but Coco Papy, director of public policy and communications for Deep Center, said the companies she is aware of in Chatham County are Saseen Bail Bonding, Savannah Bail Bonds and A Brighter Day Bail Bond.

Papy responded via email, "Bond companies are regulated with the same oversight as companies that manage health, home, and business insurance companies. Bail insurance agencies benefit from being only a small percentage of the companies regulated within this domain, and their questionable practices can often get overshadowed by larger operations."

She added that “while data is very much a part of how we solve this problem, people are not just data, and there's a very human face behind all this information. And I think that sometimes gets lost.”

Also: Lee Michael Creely's last hours marked by withdrawal, medical indifference in Chatham County jail

Possible Solutions for High Bail

Based on the report's findings, the three member organizations recommended the approval of a cash bail ordinance at the city and county levels that would apply only to misdemeanor violations under city or county code and not to any state misdemeanors, DUIs, domestic violence-related offenses, or felonies.

'Odds were pretty much against him': Creely's turbulent childhood shaped by drug addiction

Progress toward cash bail reform, however, has been made, the organizational representatives noted, including

The city of Savannah authorized a pre-arrest diversion (SPD pilot), a behavioral health unit and the REAL task force.

The Chatham County District Attorney is working with the Justice Innovation Lab to better collect data to audit for best practices. but the office has an internal policy regarding bond and a pledge to dispose of low-level, petty offenses that do not threaten public safety. Along with the Vera Institute, the DA's office has also launched the youth-diversion program, "Show Us Your Guns."

Drew Favakeh is the public safety reporter for Savannah Morning News. You can reach him at AFavakeh@savannahnow.com.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Cash bail is big business in Chatham County, so is cost to taxpayers