Location for New City Jail July 2008

Mayor Greg Nickels
PO Box 94749
Seattle, WA 98124-4749

Seattle City Councilmembers
PO Box 34025
Seattle, WA 98124-4025

RE: Location for new Seattle city jail

Dear Mayor Nickels and Seattle City Councilmembers:

As you may be aware, the North Precinct Advisory Council is composed of representatives from over 40 community groups and business organizations in north Seattle. These community groups are composed of many thousands of Seattle residents. We are committed to maintaining safe and livable neighborhoods.

This letter is written to you to share our viewpoints on the siting of the new proposed Seattle city jail, and to urge you NOT to site the jail in or near a residential neighborhood, especially at 117th and Aurora Avenue North. Here are the criteria that we believe should be used to determine the best jail location, with those comments then applied to the Aurora Avenue option.

1. Jails are Incompatible with Neighborhoods. One of the bedrocks of Seattle and of a vital city are strong and safe neighborhoods. It is just plain bad city policy to site a jail in or close to any city neighborhoods.

The Aurora Avenue location is the only proposed site with immediately adjacent residences, including single family homes, senior housing, condominiums, multi-family housing and even low-income housing. These homes would have no buffer between themselves and a jail. With an expected average stay of only 10 days, the jail will regularly release inmates, estimated to be from 20 to 40 inmates per day. No neighborhoods should be subjected to the potential criminal activity that could result.

It seems obvious that putting the new city jail in an industrial or commercially zoned area will have the least impact on important Seattle city neighborhoods and citizens.

2. Jails are Incompatible with Schools. Another siting consideration must be to protect the most vulnerable of our citizens—schoolchildren. Releasing criminals in close proximity to schools is a recipe for disaster.

In looking at the four proposed locations, Aurora has the greatest number of K through 12 schools within one mile—a total of 7 schools! These are Ingraham High School (.6 miles), Broadview Thompson K-8 (.6 miles), Northgate Elementary (.6 miles), Christ the King Elementary (.6 miles), Haller Lake Children’s Center (.6 miles), Living Wisdom School (.9 miles), Northgate Christian Academy (1 mile). There are also three Seattle Parks facilities within one mile: Madison Pool (.7 miles), Bitter Lake Playfield (.5 miles) and Broadview Park (.6 miles).

The Interbay site has 5 schools within one mile, and so is similarly ill suited for a jail. Both the Highland/Marginal and the Meyers Way sites have the least number of affected schools, with two each.

3. Jailed Offenders Will Be More Dangerous Than Originally Thought. With the cuts in King County just announced, including losing 30 prosecutors, the filing standards will be raised and potential felons charged only with misdemeanors. See The Seattle Times, Friday, June 6, 2008. Local criminal-justice leaders plan to move thousands of property-crime, forgery and drug cases to lower-level courts. In fact, according to King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, King County Superior Court is prepared to push all property crimes under $10,000 to municipal and district courts. These “low level criminal offenders” are going to be far more dangerous than portrayed by politicians.

Please recall that just a few months before James Anthony Williams stabbed a 31-year-old Sierra Club volunteer, Shannon Harps, to death on Capitol Hill, Williams was charged in Seattle Municipal Court with three counts of harassment but ended up back in the community. He exemplifies one of the types of persons who will end up in the new city jail.

The obvious result of the King County announcement is that jailed offenders will be much more dangerous than originally believed. This fact simply but pointedly underscores why the new city jail should be located away from neighborhoods, schools and parks.

Aurora has been historically vulnerable to high levels of crime but has been making significant progress. And in city living with good transit lines will become even more important as energy costs increase. Although some areas of Aurora have seen a reduction in crime due to stepped up policing and community involvement, locating a jail with the potential flow of inmates daily into the Aurora community threatens the gains that they have made as a community.

4. Distance from the Downtown Courthouse. Another important consideration is the distance that police officers and court officials will have to drive to reach the new jail. Fuel cost is an obvious concern--the Seattle Police Department is already being squeezed by the recent nearly $5.00 per gallon gasoline. This same fuel cost would make the cost of public defenders (who will be needed at the new jail) go up. Another factor is that longer trips add to global warming which Seattle is trying to take the lead in preventing.

In addition to fuel costs and the detrimental effects on the environment of long trips to the new jail, such trips will take police officers off of their patrols for greater periods of time. With the shortage of staffing in the Seattle Police Department, longer jail transporting times take valuable police resources off of our streets and out of our communities.

Looking at the four possible sites, Aurora is the furthest site from the downtown courthouse at 8.8 miles, and is clearly the least suitable for a jail.

5. Lack of Flexibility for Future Growth. It is likely that in the future either growth in the size of the jail or positioning other city services adjacent to the jail will be needed. Of the four sites, two only barely meet the current 7 acre minimum: Aurora is 7.15 acres and Interbay is 7.66 acres. The other two sites are 10.51 and 12 acres, and are thus better suited for future needed growth.

6. Eminent Domain Delays. The jail should not be sited where legal delays due to eminent domain proceedings are likely or possible. Since the Aurora and Interbay sites are not already city owned, expensive and lengthy court delays are possible before the site could even be secured. This could result in delaying the start of construction and cause all the best city planning in the world to go awry.

In summary, for the above reasons the North Precinct Advisory Council strongly requests that you do not site the new Seattle city jail in a neighborhood, and especially not at the Aurora Avenue location which is obviously the least suitable of the four proposed locations. The North Precinct Advisory Council also believes that the City should consider additional sites in industrial or commercial zoned areas just south of the existing courthouse. Such areas will be far less impacted by the addition of a new jail.

Thank you for your consideration of this important matter.

Very truly yours,


Jack Heavner, President