Bringing Data Discipline to Jail Operations, with Virginia Ryan

Jails are often the least visible parts of the justice system, yet the stakes of getting jail operations wrong are enormous: over-detention lawsuits, costly settlements, and real harm to the people held longer than the law allows. In this episode, 21CP sits down with consultant Virginia Ryan, whose background in sheriff's office data and analytics gave her a front-row seat to the gaps most agencies don't have the bandwidth to name, let alone fix. We talk about what those gaps actually look like on the ground: outdated technology, broken information flow between courts and jails, and compliance blind spots. From there, we introduce the idea of helping agencies build JailSTAT, a CompSTAT-inspired approach to jail management built around real-time population dashboards, release status visibility, and court docketing alerts. Whether you're a new sheriff inheriting a system you didn't build, a county government trying to understand jail costs, or an agency that suspects it has a problem but doesn't know where to start, this conversation is a starting point. We close with an open invitation: 21CP is looking for agencies willing to help us pilot JailSTAT and help build a model the field can actually use.

Transcript

Deborah Spence 0:20

And this is where we bring together meeting voices to discuss the challenges and opportunities based on law enforcement today. Whether you're a practitioner, a policymaker, or simply someone who cares about public safety, you've come to the right place. Today I'm talking with Virginia Ryan, a consultant and recognized expert in jail population management, Sheriff's Office Operations, and Jail Records Management. She's led records modernization efforts and supported jail population units with data. She's also been retained as an expert witness in litigation involving over detention and sheriff's duties to implement systems that protect defendants' civil liberties. So, Virginia, welcome to the pod. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I'm really excited for us to have this conversation today because I think that in some respects, jails are often forgotten in the infrastructure of the justice system. And they really do operate under enormous pressure with relatively little public attention. So I think we're going to have a really interesting conversation today. To start us off, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and why it is that we're talking today?

Virginia Ryan 1:29

Sure. So let's see, I got into sheriffs and corrections work in about 2016, where I began working at the sheriff's office to reduce the jail population, which I was a little bit unclear how to do when I was asked to take that job. But then I realized that in a lot of bureaucratic systems, there is a usually a great disconnect between policy and practice. And one of the ways that I was able to figure out that there were too many people in various pockets of the Joe population was because I would look at a policy and then I would notice that there were 700 people more than there should have been in the policy in what the policy suggested. And so I was able to start looking at policies, looking at pockets of the Joe population using pretty simple data, which historically was pretty difficult to get in jails, which I don't actually believe is by design. I think it is because so many jails have such clunky legacy systems still that it's actually very difficult for most people to figure out how to find data that is legible and easy to understand. And so I have basically figured out that using data and policy coupled together with some knowledge of the criminal justice system and how cases move and what jail data tends to look like, that there are a lot of areas that could be easily improved in jails with just a simple policy overview, review of data, uh, and that sort of thing. And so then I also spent a lot of time in Harris County, which is Houston, working for the sheriff there, Sheriff Gonzalez, to try to work through the Harvey backlog, which there were more than 10,000 people in jail there. And so a lot of that was very similar work, obviously at a much larger scale. And having a really strong leader who believes in the use of data and technology is proof that you can actually really have technology on your side and do things like increase access for probation officers to see their supervisees in jail and to give them a space if they can't get visits because the lines are too long because they're in the same lines as defense attorneys, or to create a special docket if there's not enough space in the morning docket, right? And so it's actually really just doing mini systems change in a much larger system.

Deborah Spence 4:09

Uh when we've talked before, I think one of the things that really surprised me was you said that a lot of the sheriffs that you've worked with don't actually have a good real-time picture of who is in their jail. And I think most people will be really surprised at that.

Virginia Ryan 4:24

I I think it goes back to something that I've already touched on, which is that historically getting access to the data in a way that people can understand it is not how jail data is produced. It's normally looks like a typewriter produced it. It has a bunch of different codes for classification levels, right? Like NV for nonviolent, max for maximum, it might have different pod numbers, it might have available beds, it might have beds out of service. And it is not actually designed to be as tricky as it is, but it feels like it might be because it's pretty consistent that not only can sheriffs not see who are in their jails, if somebody were to ask them on the spot, they probably couldn't tell you the total population for the day. I I'm hesitant to say that because I'm sure there's a bunch of sheriffs who would say they could, and that's incredible. Unfortunately, there's also a lot of sheriffs who can't. And, you know, I've talked to a couple sheriffs in various places who are out of beds, and then they have a spontaneous jail inspection, and they fail the inspection because they're five beds short. And then you talk to their IT department, and they know everybody is in the jail because they have an inmate inquiry that works on their website, but they've never pulled from that a report that they could have sent out to their whole staff every morning. So that's just an example of a very simple fix. Uh, the other interesting part about this is that the data is all public. Most of this data is not privileged unless the defendants are juveniles. So it is actually pretty baffling in a lot of places that this information isn't readily accessible, but it's also something that's a very easy fix. And these days you could literally have an app on your phone that pulls from a dashboard that produces reports that your staff can see. You could use various interfaces, you could have an interface for the public, you could have an interface for your for each department. So thankfully, these are very easy things to remedy, but it it is pretty consistent that there are lots of sheriffs who unfortunately have not figured out how to access the data that they have in their JMS.

Deborah Spence 6:35

So that is really interesting. It's not that the data doesn't exist, it's about it being in formats that are easily and real-time accessible.

Virginia Ryan 6:44

Yeah, and literally something as simple as not knowing how to export it to print it because you're looking at a black screen with neon letters on it.

Deborah Spence 6:53

Ah, yes, the good old days.

Virginia Ryan 6:55

Yeah. I think that's what I'm saying. They're still not actually not old days for a lot of people anymore.

Deborah Spence 7:02

Um so it clearly sounds like there's definitely a civil liability challenge here then for sheriffs if they don't know exactly who they've got at any given point in time. And I mean, neither one of us is an attorney, so I'm not expecting us to have a detailed conversation about that. But is that something that you've talked to sheriffs about or have have seen in the course of some of your work?

Virginia Ryan 7:23

That is definitely something that I have come across. And it is something that seems to be a trend where sheriffs are actually being found civilly liable pretty consistently throughout the country for over-detaining people, which again could be very easily solved using not even fancy technology to have reports for things like, okay, all open charges have been resolved. What is holding this person? And a red flag pops up on all of the employees' screens, right? To signify that this person doesn't have anything open that we can see. So we need to then have somebody figure out and work backwards to determine what's still holding them in jail. The other thing is that over-detention lawsuits are extremely expensive. And I could give you as an example in Louisiana, if you're over-detained by one day, the federal courts have determined that you are eligible for a minimum of $1,500 a day. So in addition to litigation itself being expensive and people hiring lawyers and lawyers' fees, the actual pay that people and the compensation that people are eligible for multiple days of over detention in a place where it's $1,000 or $3,000 is a lot of money for especially places that have tight budgets, small budgets are not huge jurisdictions. Uh, and so that is just something that you could spend a significant amount less of money on the front end to put safeguards in place, to update policies, to create policies. In some cases, there might not even be a policy. And I've actually seen situations where very clever civil rights lawyers have actually had things like policy change as a settlement agreement. There are ways to get ahead of this that are not difficult or expensive.

Deborah Spence 9:17

I think it goes to the idea that jails operate in a part of the criminal justice system that most people don't pay attention to. Um, because I think the average American on the street, if you asked, is over detention a thing in jails around this country, they would say, No, of course not, right? Like this would feel to the average person as something that obviously works correctly. And understandably. Right? Um, and it just it doesn't because not because anybody's trying to do anything nefarious, but just because the the numbers of people, the size of the jails, and the technology available make it difficult to stay on top of absolutely every person on any given day.

Virginia Ryan 9:53

Yes. And the other thing that I would add to that is there is a disconnect between the administrative work and the humanity, regardless of how you feel about who should be in jail or who shouldn't, the piece of paper or the release, or the booking number, or the inmate ID that you are working on in the JMS or on an actual physical piece of paper is a person. And I think that that context, when explained like that, because I have said that various places, people seem really surprised and then it sort of clicks. But also nobody has usually said that to them before I have.

Deborah Spence 11:26

Is that an accurate characterization?

Virginia Ryan 11:28

Definitely. And in multiple places that I have seen and had conversations with people and worked, it has actually become apparent that sheriffs did not have hardly any money in their budget for technology. And so this really was not by design that people don't have upgraded systems or technology systems. It really just is not, you know, legacy systems they don't cost that much money to maintain at this point. So it really is going to cost sheriffs a lot of money initially to upgrade and overhaul and move all of the data, the historical data, which in a lot of places you need to retain, to go from an old legacy system where all you've had to pay is to maintain it, to then a new system where once you get everything in there, it will be worth it. It will probably save you money in lots of other places. But I would guess that the initial cost is gonna probably be significant.

Deborah Spence 12:28

That is a big consideration that if there's a large upfront cost, both in terms of money and the time and data entry, you can understand why with limited budgets and limited people that a sheriff's office might put that work off.

Virginia Ryan 12:45

Right. And they still might not have a large budget for technology, right? It's in a lot of places, it may be something that just needs to be a significant, like a significant change needs to be made to their budget in order to procure whatever technology they need.

Deborah Spence 13:00

We got started on our conversations around this idea of creating a tool that would better help jails make use of their existing data in their legacy systems, but maybe bring more of a CompStat style approach to jail operations and give them more real-time data-driven tools to help them manage their jail populations. What's your vision there? Is it something I feel like it's something related to it's akin to Comstat if we were talking police operations, law enforcement operations, right? Like it feels like there's something that we can move, learn from that experience and move into the jail context. Am I right?

Virginia Ryan 13:42

For sure. So it it has, it seems to us like it would be a great model after police departments to have something called jail stat that could be as comprehensive as certain jurisdictions wanted, but I think the gist of what Jailstat would offer, maybe in its core, would be things like a real-time jail population dashboard, benchmarks for things like how long does it take for somebody to get moved to the Department of Corrections, things like demographics on the jail population dashboards that people in the community could use, right? Or a jail population dashboard with interfaces both for the sheriff's office itself, the municipality, the community. And then there could also be things around like organizational assessments and workflow cues. In a lot of places, the court paperwork does not get transmitted to the jail electronically still. So that is a delay a lot of times in either some a defendant being released to go to drug treatment, being released to their family, going to the Department of Corrections, whatever it is. There are still a lot of very clunky manual systems in these much larger systems that create lots of delays. And then, of course, the really I would say the meat of potatoes of this would be the policy and compliance review, specifically because as I mentioned, there's such a disconnect a lot of times and processes evolve. People create workarounds if things like technology stop working and they can't get in touch with an IT professional, the workaround works fine. So then that becomes the way, even though that's not what the policy says. But also, people are trying to get the jobs done. So between policy review and presenting data that exists but is currently not accessible to people would definitely be a two of the, I would say, biggest hotspots for us to offer to people for the jail stat.

Deborah Spence 15:52

Yeah, it feels to me that jail stat is really about the presentation of data, not necessarily wholesale replacements of your jail management system. For sure. That is what I want that also.

Virginia Ryan 16:05

Yes, no, we are not telling you you need to go out and buy some, you know, $1.8 million jail management system, but actually we can probably get you some pretty serious technology improvements just with using something like Tableau or Power BI.

Deborah Spence 16:20

That's something that has changed dramatically in the technology world in recent years. Um, you know, that 15 or 20 years ago, the only solution would have been a total overhaul of your systems. And now we live in a in a universe where it's possible for uh an analyst like yourself to really take what they have and help display and present and use it in a more efficient manner, as opposed to saying the only solution is to start over from scratch.

Virginia Ryan 16:48

Agree.

Deborah Spence 16:48

If you were sheriff listening to this and this is intriguing to you, like what would an engagement look like with 21 CP?

Virginia Ryan 16:57

I would envision it looking like that a team would come in and do an on-site assessment. And then I would expect that the Jailstat team would then give recommendations on, you know, maybe the two or three hotspots that we thought were most important for that jurisdiction to focus on. And one of the big concepts that we've talked about in coming up with Jailstat is that we would want to make sure that in doing all of this work, we would guarantee that there would be a cost savings to the shirts to the jurisdiction after we were finished, once all of the different recommendations had been implemented.

Deborah Spence 17:39

That cost savings could be realized in a lot of different ways, right? It might be because they're no longer paying fines for over detentions, it might be because we're able to give them data that helps them lower their reliability risks, it might be that there's efficiencies found for uh staff within the jail on a on a daily basis. Um and I I also think that a lot of what we could help them build in terms of visualization is pretty easily housed within their existing web definitely. Yes, presence, right?

Virginia Ryan 18:14

Yeah, definitely.

Deborah Spence 18:15

Particularly if we're talking about having them have insights that might be exclusive to jail personnel and then others that might be public facing, like the the internet helps us build that. Um 21 CPU would really love to hear from agencies who might be willing to work with us to make jail stat real. Right now, it's an idea that we've had and been discussing with Virginia. Um, but we need to figure out how we can pilot this model and really stress test it in a real environment and build something that the field can use. So I think if any of what you've heard today as a listener sounds familiar to you, um, this is really our invitation to start a conversation. Yeah, Virginia, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me about this again for us, obviously, but this time recording it for all of our 21 CP pod listeners. Is there any last thoughts or calls to action or ideas that you really want to leave our listeners with about this?

Virginia Ryan 19:16

Yes, I would love to leave our listeners with there are definitely areas that we have not included. If there are certain areas in your jail or your sheriff's office that you think need attention that we haven't touched on, I'm sure that there's a way we could bring that into our jail stat concept. Uh, and basically what we want to do is meet sheriffs where they are and figure out how to make things work even better than they already are. That's fantastic.

Deborah Spence 19:45

I think sometimes people think of 21 CP as operating purely in a policing law enforcement context. Uh, you know, we do have great experts like yourself that also allow us to do work in uh jails around the country. And it really is not just interesting work, but very important work. It's a a key part of the criminal justice system, and our interest is really in making that whole system work better for everyone.

Virginia Ryan 20:10

The other thing is a lot of sheriff's offices have investigation departments and patrol departments, so there could even be a way to incorporate other aspects of 21 CP in those departments if people think there are needs there too.

Deborah Spence 20:24

Very true. Well, thank you very much for chatting with me again today, Virginia. It's been very fun. And I hope we hear from some people out in the field who would like to talk to us more about Jailstat.

Virginia Ryan 20:36

Me too. I'm so looking forward to working with you guys.

Deborah Spence 20:39

Here at 21CP Solutions, we're committed to making public safety work better for agencies, for officers, and for the communities they serve. If today's conversation resonated with you, we'd love to connect. You can reach us at info at 21cpsolutions.com or by phone at 844-767-2172. New episodes of the 21st P contract regularly. You can find them on our website or subscribe to a Apple Podcast or Spotify. One final note our Steam Music was composed by Rachel McCullough. Thank you so much for spending time with us today, and we'll see you next time.