By Andrew Engelson

A controversial agreement between the South Correctional Entity (SCORE)—a municipal jail jointly owned by six South King County cities— and the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention (DAJD) to house county inmates and help alleviate staffing shortages at the downtown jail has abruptly ended after only three months.

“SCORE and DAJD have mutually agreed to end the housing agreement,” SCORE director Devon Schrum said during a meeting of SCORE’s operations board Wednesday. “We’ve never been able to get enough people from DAJD to make a difference for them,” she added. “It’s entirely possible there will be some negative spin.” 

In an email to DAJD staff, department director Allan Nance wrote that “folllowing an initial three-month review,” DAJD and SCORE “have jointly agreed to end a pilot project for housing services, which began on June 10, 2023. As a result, both parties are working together to return all King County jail residents housed at SCORE to DAJD facilities.” About 22 people will return from SCORE to the county’s own jails, Nance said.

In his email, Nance said the decision to end the controversial agreement “was based on two primary factors. First, DAJD has determined that the number of King County jail residents eligible for transfer to SCORE would never be sufficient to provide operational benefits and staffing relief, given the mutually agreed upon screening criteria and the complex and dynamic population housed in our County jails. Therefore, the resource cost of this pilot has outweighed any potential benefit.” Second, Nance said, SCORE needed to use the space for other inmates from the six cities that own the jail. 

In April, the King County Council, in a 7 to 2 vote, approved an agreement to allow transfer of 60 inmates at the downtown jail to SCORE, and create a plan to house and book some people in DAJD custody at SCORE.

The agreement was supposed to help address chronic understaffing at the downtown jail, where a shortage of as many as 120 officers has resulted in overworked jail guards, substandard conditions for inmates, and delays in getting inmates who are ill to medical care when needed, which PubliCola first reported on late last year.  

The number of inmates actually booked through DAJD and housed at SCORE has been relatively small. According to King County’s jail data dashboard, the number has hovered around 30 through much of the year.

The sudden end of the agreement comes after four people in its custody have died at SCORE in the past year–an extraordinarily high number. The ACLU of Washington, concerned about conditions at the downtown King County jail, initiated a lawsuit in February against the county over lack of adequate medical and mental health care, noting that six people died in custody at the downtown jail in 2022. 

La Rond Baker, legal director for the ACLU of Washington, told PubliCola, “The conditions in the [downtown jail] are really pretty horrifying and very, very concerning. They’re putting people’s lives at risk. What we are most concerned about is the failure to transport people to medical appointments necessary for them to maintain even base level of health. They’re not consistently taking anyone to outside medical appointments because of staffing shortages.”

The county’s downtown jail has a capacity of between 1,200 and 1,700 inmates, while SCORE can house about half that. According to its website SCORE is currently holding 443 people. According to DAJD spokesman Noah Haglund, 21 King County inmates remain at SCORE and “[b]oth parties are working together to return” them back to to DAJD jails.

The pilot allowed DAJD to evaluate SCORE housing as a potential option for temporary staffing relief. Given the mutually agreed upon eligibility criteria and the complex and dynamic population housed in our County jails, DAJD’s other approaches have provided a more efficient use of staffing and jail operations than the SCORE pilot could offer. These include rebalancing population between facilities and reopening bookings at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.

“Four deaths in one year is astronomical,” said Molly Gilbert, a spokesperson for the union that represents public defenders. 

PubliCola has filed public records requests for all documents, including medical examiner reports, related to the four deaths at SCORE.

Haglund—who got back to PubliCola shortly after this story was published—said none of the four people who died at SCORE in 2023 were people transferred or booked through the DAJD agreement. Haglund also said that DAJD plans to reopen bookings at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent on October 2.

“The pilot allowed DAJD to evaluate SCORE housing as a potential option for temporary staffing relief. Given the mutually agreed upon eligibility criteria and the complex and dynamic population housed in our County jails, DAJD’s other approaches have provided a more efficient use of staffing and jail operations than the SCORE pilot could offer,” Haglund said.

On its website, SCORE has published press releases on the four unexpected fatalities this year. On March 25 a 65-year-old man collapsed and died. On May 19, a 43-year-old woman in custody was found unresponsive. On June 27, a 25-year-old was also found unresponsive. And on August 12, a 42-year-old woman in custody was also found unresponsive and died.

The fatality in March is notable because it occurred just as the King County council was debating legislation authorizing the agreement between DAJD and SCORE. The council’s Law, Justice, Health and Human Services Committee voted to approve the legislation on March 7, and the death occurred on March 25. The full council approved the measure on April 4, with council members Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Zahilay voting no. 

At the time, the council was heatedly discussing previous deaths in custody at SCORE, in particular one incident in 2019.

In addition, SCORE seems to be in violation of a condition in the agreement that was added by Kohl-Wells in an amendment to the legislation. In 2021, the legislature passed a law requiring all jails in the state to file reports to the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) on the causes and circumstances of any unexpected fatalities within 120 days of the incident. A Seattle Times report in March found that few jails are complying with the law, which went into effect this year. 

“Our position on the SCORE contract has been the same since the County first considered the proposal months ago: King County should be focusing on finding ways to reduce the number of people incarcerated wherever they are held. Incarceration is a harmful, ineffective, and racially disproportionate policy that we know doesn’t make our communities safer.”—Department of Public Defense director Anita Khandelwal

Specifically in response to that problem, Kohl-Welles introduced and passed an amendment to the DAJD-SCORE agreement legislation that required SCORE to comply with state law and file fatality reports with DOH.

However, according to Mark Johnson, a spokesperson for DOH’s Office of Public Affairs and Equity, DOH has no record that SCORE or any of the six cities that operate the jail have filed reports related to any of the four fatalities that have occurred in custody at SCORE in 2023. Both the March and May incidents occurred more than 120 days ago. 

The amendment Kohl-Welles added to the legislation states: “South Correctional Entity has acknowledged and agreed to comply with the unexpected fatality review requirements in accordance with state law, and publicly issues unexpected fatality reports.

SCORE director Schrum did not respond to requests for comment.

Gilbert, with the union representing public defenders, said that the arrangement created many logistical issues that were a burden for both inmates and their attorneys. Transfers to court were especially complicated, and Gilbert noted that DAJD inmates held at SCORE who had hearings in the Kent courthouse were not directly transferred, but transported to Seattle were they spent a night in a holding cell before before being shuttled to Kent.

In addition, she noted that several public defenders complained of being turned away from meeting with their clients at SCORE because the jail said it did not have adequate staff to accommodate those requests.

DPD director Anita Khandelwal said in an email: “Our position on the SCORE contract has been the same since the County first considered the proposal months ago: King County should be focusing on finding ways to reduce the number of people incarcerated wherever they are held. Incarceration is a harmful, ineffective, and racially disproportionate policy that we know doesn’t make our communities safer.”

Editor’s note: Due to a typo introduced in editing, this piece originally said that five “counties” operate the SCORE jail; in fact, it is six cities.