Public Defenders Pull Out of Talks after Mayor Reportedly Ignores Concerns over Jail Contract

On Friday, Department of Public Defense Director Anita Khandelwal sent a letter to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office announcing her withdrawal from the ongoing, behind-the-scenes stakeholdering process surrounding a possible contract between the City of Seattle and the regional South Correctional Entity, a jail also known as SCORE, which is located all the way down in Des Moines, WA. h said the mayor’s office did not sufficiently address concerns she raised, so it did not feel like anything she said in those meetings would influence the decision-making process. 

“There isn’t a pause to answer my questions, there’s just moving forward,” Khandelwal said in an interview with The Stranger. 

Her departure and her letter brings the private, allegedly unproductive conversation to the public, where the mayor’s office will either have to answer on the record or ignore concerns from those who disagree with the administration’s carceral ideology. Harrell’s office did not respond to my request for comment.

The public caught wind of the possible SCORE contract in May, but the mayor doesn’t have to do a big, public debate over contracts like the city council must do with their ordinances. Instead, the mayor’s office launched a private stakeholdering process with representatives from the Seattle Municipal Court (SMC), the Seattle Police Department (SPD), the Seattle Office of Civil Rights, Purpose, Dignity, Action (PDA), and other groups at the end of June. 

After attending two stakeholdering meetings, Khandelwal decided to take the following concerns public.

Contracting with SCORE would allow SPD officers to work around the King County Jail’s booking restrictions and book low-level offenders, likely those charged with nonviolent misdemeanors. As Khandelwal cited in her letter, according to research from the Vera Institute of Justice, pretrial detention leads to longer periods of incarceration and increases the chance someone returns to jail later.

Khandelwal said the City instead argues that booking people into SCORE will help people access services for homelessness or addiction. The Department of Public Defense (DPD) has “no confidence” that will happen given the department’s experience with clients incarcerated in SCORE. With Harrell’s office and SPD insisting that they would jail people in SCORE for only a few days at a time, Khandelwal said, “There is simply no way that such jail stays will result in meaningful service connections.”

Not only will contracting with SCORE not help low-level offenders, Khandelwal argues that such a contract would “present significant burdens for all criminal legal system entities.” As she wrote, public defenders will spend more working hours traveling to meet their clients at the Des Moines facility, and DPD will bill the City for that. The City will also end up paying SPD to drive all the way to Des Moines just to book someone on a nonviolent, low-level crime such as shoplifting. Khandelwal argued it would be more cost effective to pay businesses for stolen merchandise. 

The City would also have to transport inmates to appear at Seattle Municipal Court. If the City wanted to cut costs and make SCORE inmates appear via video, DPD would have to send attorneys to SCORE for those hearings anyway, Khandelwal said. DPD would probably sue over it, too, according to the letter. Earlier this year, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to force people to appear from jail cells, as it undermines the presumption of innocence. 

Though Khandelwal does not feel as if she can influence the mayor’s decision in these stakeholdering meetings, she said she wouldn’t go so far as to say the SCORE contract is a “foregone conclusion.” 

Other stakeholders see value in the meetings. 

“We see the mayor’s workgroup as an important chance to raise questions around potential jail arrangements, to identify issues, and to suggest ways to address them in the contracting process,” said PDA Deputy Director Brandi McNeil.

McNeil said PDA draws from the experience of the people they work with who have been incarcerated at the King County Jail, SCORE, and other area jails. McNeil acknowledged that no one likes being in jail, but “there are marked differences in experiences that we want City leaders to be aware of, especially for people with substance use issues, medical needs, and mental health challenges,” McNeil said. 

In contrast to the DPD’s experience, McNeil said the mayor’s office has been responsive to PDA’s concerns.

Khandelwal encouraged members of the public who share her concerns or who oppose a potential contract with SCORE to contact the mayor and their city council members.