City Council Approves Agreement to Share King County Jail

Remember back in April when County Executive Dow Constantine and Mayor Mike McGinn announced that they'd agreed to share King County Jail? The City Council approved the agreement yesterday, taking one more step toward keeping the City's inmates in the city limits -- and stalling the need for a new jail for at least the next 20 years. If the City had built a new one, the Mayor's Office said, it would've set us back around $200 million.

The County, according to the Mayor's office, would gain "greater operational efficiency."

KCJ, which practically shares a backyard with the oddly wholesome-named Seattle Justice Center (which houses the City's Municipal Court), would house some of Seattle's misdemeanor offenders until 2030 -- a decade more than a previous agreement last year, which would have only housed Seattle inmates from 2017 to 2020.

As before, the City and County would pool their resources on rehabilitation and re-entry programs so funds are used keeping low-risk offenders out of jail -- which I can get behind the most, if the City and the County can work together to make it happen. For now, just be glad we're not overspending on prisons.