Thurston County jail enacts booking restrictions for women after running out of space
Thurston County has started restricting what who can be booked into its jail due to space limitations, Sheriff Derek Sanders said.
The new restrictions affect women, Sanders shared in a Wednesday Facebook post.
“The space issues that have been present for the past decade continue to strain resources at the jail,” Sanders said in the post. “Failing to enact these restrictions would place the county in a high liability scenario, with risk of harm being placed on both staff and inmates alike.”
The decision to enact restrictions comes after the jail ran out of space for females who officials consider violent or who are living with mental illness. Sanders said correctional deputies have placed such people in every available space possible in the jail. That includes a transfer unit and video court area, neither of which were intended as permanent living spaces, he said.
The Thurston County jail is at 3491 Ferguson St. SW in Tumwater. The jail has four dorms that can house 40 to 60 people each and one maximum security unit with 120 cells, Sanders said earlier this year. The jail roster indicated there were 313 total people held in the jail as of Friday morning.
People who officials consider violent or who are living with mental illness are usually held separately in the maximum-security unit and often times in a cell by themselves due to safety concerns, Sanders has previously said.
Space concerns are not new at the county jail. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the jail grappled with overcrowding. After pandemic-era restrictions were enacted, the jail population decreased from the mid-400s to the mid-200s. Those restrictions were ultimately lifted in 2023.
The county convened a work group to identify short- and long-term solutions to more recent space shortages earlier this year. In his Wednesday post, Sanders said that work was still ongoing.
What do the restrictions mean in practice?
When someone has appeared in court on suspicion of a crime and fails to comply with their conditions of release in the pretrial phase, a warrant is issued for their arrest.
Sanders said the Sheriff’s Office will continue to enter these warrants as usual, but they will only confirm a warrant if the suspect is accused of a limited list of violence offenses.
Those offenses include domestic violence assault, domestic violence order violation and violent felonies.
Warrants that pertain to other crimes will not be accepted, he said. Those other crimes include, but are not limited to:
- Second-degree burglary
- Auto theft
- Property damage
- Felony harassment, threats to kill
- Hit-and-run with injury
- Second-degree arson
- Fraud
- Impersonation
- Theft
- Drug dealing
People who are arrested with probable cause — in effect, new arrests for new crimes — will still be booked into the jail as usual, Sanders said.
“When conditions improve, the restrictions will be lifted,” Sanders said. “If conditions deteriorate, restrictions will be applied to probable cause arrests as well.”
The Olympian has asked Sanders to elaborate on the new restrictions as well as the conditions inside the jail, but did not hear back from the sheriff on Friday.
