George:

I haven't seen how Rob Bell's bill concerning work release and home electronic incarceration is going to work in practice, but my impression, from reading the bill, is that it is much ado about nothing.

The law used to say that either the sheriff or the jail administrator would have the authority to decide on his or her own to allow an inmate into such a program. This change takes away the power of a jail administratorm, and provides that the decision must be made by the sheriff. Realistically, this is an almost insignificant change. Jail administrators serve at the pleasure of a Jail Board, which typically includes the Sheriff as a member. It is rare to find a jail administrator who is willing to let folks onto work release when the Sheriff who serves on the Board that hires him disagrees. Of course, judges can still order home electronic incarceration or work release even if the jail doesn't want the person to have it; this bill doesn't change that.

Under this system, I would bet large sums of money that the first thing that the sheriff will do, in deciding whether to grant work release, is to ask the work release supervisor at the jail what he or she thinks. It seems unlikely that there will be much change in the numbers of people allowed on work release.

Of course, it is interesting to note that in Rob Bell's prosecution experience in Orange County, the Sheriff of Orange County has law enforcement powers, and most cases that came to court and resulted in jail time were brought by the Sheriff. Not so in Albemarle and Charlottesville, where the police powers are implemented by police forces, and the Sheriff is responsible for civil process and courtroom security only. There is little reason to believe that the Sheriff in Charlottesville or Albemarle, or any of his agents or employees, would have any information about a particular defendant to entitle him or her to make the decision.

I have a philosophical preference for giving decision-making power to the person or persons who are most likely to have the information necessary to make an intelligent decision. Rob's bill takes power away from someone who has probably been housing the defendant for months before trial, who knows him or has records of his behavior, and who is supposed to have particular expertise in corrections matters -- the jail superintendent -- and gives it instead to someone -- the sheriff -- who may know very little about the defendant except whether he sassed the judge in open court. But since the sheriff is almost surely going to be relying on the advice of the jail administrator anyway, it doesn't really matter.

Lloyd Snook (electronic mail, September 4, 2002)