What Happened
In a move that is expected to help it save at least 30 percent on its incarceration costs, The City of Tacoma, Washington is now sending people arrested on misdemeanor charges to the nearby City of Fife.
So What?
Tacoma is taking advantage of a competitive market for prisoners in Washington,. The city expects to save big on prison expenses, following the conclusion Jan. 1 of its exclusive contract with the Pierce County prison system, according to news reports. Tacoma’s deal with Fife is non-exclusive, and Tacoma will continue to send some of its prisoners to Pierce, but the services offered by Fife are cheaper across the board. Fife, meanwhile, has become a regional hub for prison services, providing and coordinating jail space for 12 other local towns in addition to Tacoma. The prison-resource sharing model may be of interest to municipalities looking to save on prison costs. Also, the Tacoma-Fife deal is an example of an aggressive policy among cities and towns in Washington of setting up interlocal agreements to administer municipal services more efficiently and effectively.
How it works
Until this year, Tacoma was spending $6 million a year to house prisoners awaiting trial to Pierce County prisons. Savings Tacoma will realize as part of its new 10-year agreement with Fife include:
- Booking fees of $20 per inmate, down from $212 per inmate at Pierce County
- Housing fees of $65 a day, compared to $85 a day at Pierce
The elimination of an $84 fee Pierce charges to transport prisoners to their arraignments. All arraignments of prisoners in Fife’s networks are conducted by video, at a cost of $65.
The use, through a separate agreement, of Fife’s electronic home monitoring system for low-risk offenders, which Tacoma officials say is cheaper and more effective than similar systems offered by the county.
Fife itself only has 36 prison beds and it does not have a women’s prison, but the city has developed a network of eight other local prisons where it can house prisoners from the 13 towns it coordinates with. According to Fife’s 2012 budget, funds that the prison system takes in from “intergovernmental” sources and “charges for services” accounted for more than half of the city’s $1,077,524 prison system operating budget in 2012.
A copy of a prison services contract between Fife and the town of Buckley—another town that sends prisoners to Fife—is available here.
Interlocal Agreements
Fife’s jail resource network is enabled by Washington’s Interlocal Cooperation Act. A list of some of the interlocal agreements Fife has entered into is available here. They include, among other things:
- School office furniture purchasing agreement with the Vancouver, WA School District
- Countywide 911 emergency services agreements
Most states have similar legislation, and scholarly research has been conducted into how interlocal agreements can be most effectively used. These two studies, both of which focus on Iowa, are among those that are publiclly available:
“Small Town Civic Structure and Interlocal Collaboration for Public Services,” which focuses on how city and town residents perceive interlocal agreements, and suggests, among other things, that housing criminal suspects out of town is generally received positively because it makes people feel safer.
“Elements of Successful Interlocal Agreements: An Iowa Case Study,” which, among other things, at what types of internal civic structures and inter-municipality relationships are helpful for maintaining strong interlocal relationships.