A news story we ran today concerns the sheriff of Portsmouth, VA and his decision to withhold inmate labor services from most public agencies, especially those under the Portsmouth city government. In Virginia, cities are not considered to be part of a county, and there are both city and county sheriff's departments. Sheriffs are still elected constitutional officers.
The sheriff is upset over the city's reluctance to supplement the pay of his deputies so that the sheriff's department's salaries are competitive with other local agencies. The Commonwealth of Virginia pays the lion's share of deputies' salaries, but the cities and counties they serve frequently supplement personnel costs. Presently, the state pays $28,234 toward a deputy's starting salary, and the City of Portsmouth contributes an additional $2,171—only 7% of the total—once the deputy completes the training academy. The sheriff complains that his people don't make enough money to support their families, and he is constantly losing officers to better-paying outfits.
Sheriff, I feel your pain. The city obviously benefits from the work your employees do, and it is only fair for it to share in the cost of providing it. Retaining employees mean that deputies who are rendering services will be more experienced and knowledgeable, and are likely to deliver a higher quality product and keep the citizens happier and safer. My problem is with your strategy and method of making your point.
Jail inmates provide labor to remove litter from roads and other public properties, wash public vehicles and other equipment, board up abandoned buildings, move furniture, and other laborer-type duties that take manpower but not a high level of skill. If this work goes undone, the city isn't likely to grind to a halt, but efficiency is reduced and the quality of life in the community is diminished. If one is to accept the "Broken Windows" theory of crime causation (on which the community policing movement of the 1980s was based), this inevitably leads to an increase in crime and a greater consciousness of insecurity and fear among the members of the community. It seems counterintuitive that maintaining trash-free roadsides and fixing up shabby buildings will deter violent crime, but people who feared the Black Plague felt the same way about bathing and washing their clothes. Sometimes taking care of the little things means you don't have to take care of the big ones.
Withholding inmate labor doesn't have a connection to persuading the city to pony up more money. I'm on the other side of the country from Virginia, but I imagine they're experiencing the same funding shortfalls that virtually every other local government in the country is dealing with. Depriving the city of services that cost the sheriff's department little or nothing to provide isn't going to do a thing except to torque off the locals.
WAR STORY ALERT
One cold winter night, I was waiting at the jail with a prisoner who had decided to rearrange the merchandise in a local convenience store. He overturned every shelf and was persuaded to cease and desist only after being spritzed with a complimentary sample of Eau du Habañero furnished by one of my colleagues. I found myself waiting with my unwilling guest and around a dozen other representatives of local law enforcement while the on-duty booking sergeant staged a kind of protest demonstration. He believed he was understaffed, and decided to reduce the throughput to one intake at a time, searching, booking, photographing, fingerprinting, and classifying each prisoner before starting with the next, even though the complete process involved five or more jail deputies who normally worked cooperatively. I think I was there about three hours for my turn at a process that took about five minutes for my involvement.
I and my fellow brothers in blue were, ah, annoyed (this is not the descriptor I used at the time). My supervisor was unaware of the slowdown, and visited a pox upon my house ("If you like the jail so much, I hear they're hiring."), as did the watch commander upon the sergeants'. None of these people had a thing to say about the staffing situation in booking, and the people who did have a say weren't asking for our input. We became the innocent victims, as did, indirectly, the people we would have otherwise been out protecting and serving.
WAR STORY ALERT ENDS—RESUME NORMAL READING
The sheriff in Portsmouth should consider who he is injuring when he withholds a service that is unrelated to his salary problems. This isn't crisis management of meager resources. It's just pettiness, and it's beneath his public station and obligation.
