Butler Common Pleas Judge Patricia Oney recently sentenced a man to 10 weekends at the county jail after he plead guilty to unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. Defense attorney David Washington said a few years ago he had more success getting weekend time for his clients, but now he said it seems the judges’ philosophies may have changed.
“It’s still allowed, but many judges just tend not to do it that way,” he said.
Butler County Common Pleas Court Administrator Gary Yates said when the Reflections minimum security jail was operating a few years ago more people were allowed to serve weekend-only sentences so they wouldn’t lose their jobs. The facility closed in 2009 due to budget constraints. Common Pleas Judge James Flannery in Warren County has a court committee looking into creating such a facility there, perhaps in the vacant Walmart in Lebanon.
“I just think we spend too much money transporting prisoners in and out of a secure facility, when some of them just need to be punished,” he said. “Just make it inconvenient for them, let them know ‘you messed up and there are consequences to it’.”
Some judges feel when someone has done something serious enough to warrant a jail sentence, they should serve it consecutively. Middletown Municipal Judge Mark Wall is one of those people. He said his average sentence is three days in jail and he has let people serve their time in the Middletown Jail on weekends, but he is doing it less frequently these days.
“If they deserve thirty days in jail then it should be served consecutively,” Wall said. “If they have consequences over and above that, they should have thought about that before they committed the crime.”
Franklin Municipal Court Judge Rupert Ruppert agreed with Wall, he says he only agrees to weekend jail three or four times a year. He said if someone has a new job and they don’t have vacation time yet and might be in danger of losing their job, he’ll consider it. College students who might have finals are also candidates, he said adding “which is a real punishment because then they can’t party.”
Common Pleas Judge Noah Powers, who runs the dead beat parent specialty court in Butler County, said he agrees to weekend sentences on occasion.
“I wouldn’t say I often do it, I sometimes do, because if I put somebody in jail and they lose their job, I’m going to have a hard time collecting child support out of them,” he said.
He said the practice shouldn’t be used too frequently because the jails would be bursting at the seams on the weekends if everyone was allowed to string their time out over a protracted period, to satisfy the total time sentenced.
Those in charge of jails in the two counties say the weekend programs can be problematic. Butler County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Tony Dwyer said they take in weekend inmates countywide, but it creates multiple times more work and paperwork for the jail. People smuggling in contraband is also an issue with the short-timers.
“The booking process is probably a couple of hours in and an hour or so out,” he said. “You would do it once for 10 days, or five times for a 10-day stay, two-days at a time.”
Warren County Sheriff Larry Sims said he doesn’t get many weekenders in his jail, but at any given time he can have as many as 20 work release inmates. Dead beat parents typically are allowed work release. He said the contraband issue became such a problem he had to segregate the work release people away from other inmates.
“The work release inmates are in their own much smaller housing unit,” he said. “So if for some reason they are able to sneak something in, it doesn’t get distributed throughout the rest of the inmates. There are less people asking for things and sharing things, so we have a much better handle on that.”
Defense attorney Lawrence Hawkins said he also believes judges have veered away from weekend inmates because there is an increased opportunity for someone to not show up at the jail at all, or report late and get turned away. Then typically the person goes back before the judge and is usually made to serve their sentence consecutively, possibly with more time tacked on.
“If I’m the judge, I’m not real excited that I have to chase someone down because they didn’t do what they were supposed to,” he said. “If you’re the client, I think it’s a great situation for you, because now you’re in a position where you can take care of your debt to society and you’re not going to lose your job or get kicked out of school. You’re not going to completely disrupt and possibly have to give up some things in your life you have going on that are productive.”
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