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1 McLean County Criminal Justice Coordinating Council Executive Committee Meeting May 8, 2013 CJCC Strategic Plan The revised draft of the CJCC Strategic Plan was circulated to the Executive Committee. Dr. Beck suggested posting a Google Docs version to allow a collaborative editing process. He will create one and provide the link to the committee. ISU Stevenson Center Statistical Report Dr. Beck gave a review of the number of bookings and the number of bed days from 2007-2012. There has been an increase in the number of arrests over time and an increase in the average number of bed days for Class X, Class 1 and Class 3 felonies. The total number of bed days is projected to match the peak year of 2008 (if the current trend continues). Almost every case category has seen some increase in the length of stay or in the number of bookings. There was discussion regarding the “other” case category of persons in custody – this represents Traffic, Family, Dissolution and Out-of-County cases in custody. Following discussion, William Scanlon was asked to forward the current filing statistics to the group. Judge Freitag agreed to speak to Sarjeel Rivzi about the current caseload for the pre-trial services division. Dr. Beck then reviewed the statistics regarding those categorized as “Mental Problem Risk”, “Mentally Ill” and labeled with both categories. The Mental Problem Risk designation is made by the officer at the point of arrest. The Mentally Ill designation is made by the jail staff following a mental health assessment at the point of booking. Neither designation seems to be replicated in the statistics of the other (a small percentage are duplicates). The problem with the Mental Problem Risk designation is that no one is sure how it is being made, what training the officer may have had regarding mental illness and assessing mental illness, and the designation appears to be largely subjective. Only the Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) for officers would provide a good background for the assessment process. Due to the subjectivity of the assessment, the category will be excluded from further analysis. The number of bookings for those designated as mentally ill has increased dramatically since 2007, and the length of stay for that population has increased. The rationale for this includes: o Better trained staff regarding identifying those with a mental illness o Loss of community-based mental health services o Reduction in community-based crisis stabilization services o Loss of transitional housing for mentally ill o Loss of case workers for the population ---PAGE BREAK--- 2 The costs of treating the mentally ill have devolved from the State to the County or cities over the past 5-7 years. The Stevenson Center has also completed preliminary analysis of the length of stay divided between pre-trial incarceration and sentenced time. When a person is sentenced to credit for time served, all the credited time would be considered pre-trial incarceration. Dr. Beck has been able to insure that detention credit is not being given to a defendant who has multiple files and multiple sentences. The preliminary analysis is that the pre-trial length of stay has been increasing during the first quarter of 2013. Other There was discussion regarding the issue of obtaining fingerprints from those defendants in misdemeanor or felony cases where there was not an original arrest on charges. The issue will be discussed further before a formal policy is proposed. Meeting Adjourned: 8:57 a.m. Next Meeting: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 7:45 a.m.