Once, the City of Auburn averaged the highest or second highest number per day of misdemeanant inmates housed at the SCORE jail.
No more — today the cities of Renton and Federal Way have that honor.
“Third place is good,” said Auburn Deputy Mayor John Holman.
“Third place is good, in this situation, yes,” said Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus.
Backus, Auburn’s representative to the multi-city SCORE board, presented this and other jail stats at Monday night’s regular meeting of the City Council.
On the heels of King County’s announcement in 2009 that it would no longer accept inmates from area jails after 2012, the cities of Auburn, Burien, Des Moines, Federal Way, SeaTac and Tukwila got together, financed, built and opened the jail in the fall of 2011.
Here are a handful of highlights from the report:
By month and year, SCORE’S total average daily population was 621 as of December of 2014. While that number is significantly higher than it had been in the previous two years — about 300 in 2012 and 525 in 2013 — Backus said that the jail is accepting inmates from more contract cities, and that generates more revenue for the member cities listed above.
Among the contract cities are Fife, Lynwood, Covington, Marysville, Mercer Island, Milton, Normandy Park, Kirkland, and Redmond. The Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and the Port of Seattle are contract agencies.
Auburn’s billable, average daily population at the jail fell from 100 in 2012 to a median of 66 in 2014. In early 2013, Backus explained, the City switched from Auburn Municipal Court to contracting with King County District Court, and thereafter, began to show a significant decrease in the number of Auburn inmates housed.
“It does not mean we didn’t book anyone, or that they weren’t convicted of anything,” Backus said. “It’s just a different booking philosophy and sentencing philosophy, as we talked about numerous times when we looked at the budget. That was a significant savings of — depending on timing — roughly $2 million to the City.”
In terms of total bookings for members and contract cities, between December 2013 and December 2014, the average daily bookings in 2012 were 34, in 2013 they were 45, they were 57 last March and they hit a high of 66 in June.
“It’s a good even split,” Backus added, emphasizing once again that the daily bookings increased with the addition of the contract cities.
As for member agency bookings by type, 452 (49 percent) of the bookings were for outstanding warrants, 319 were for new arrests, 90 were for custody transfers and 43 were felony transfers to King County.
Auburn’s billable, average daily jail population ranged from a low of 62 in December 2013 to a high of 75 in March 2014.
