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On August 5, Johnson County voters will decide if a quarter-cent sales tax should be renewed as a dedicated funding source for public safety services and operations. The county’s $19.6 million portion of the annual revenues generated by the tax would be used to:
Build and Operate a New Crime Lab
Build and Operate a Juvenile Services Complex
Fund a Jail Expansion and Future Operations
Frequently asked questions about those services and operations include:
Crime Lab
Q: Where is the Johnson County Crime Lab?
A: 6000 Lamar in Mission, where it was originally occupied in 1974.
Q: What services does the lab offer?
A: In addition to crime scene processing, the lab provides firearms and tool mark examination, latent print processing and comparison, photography, DNA analysis, drug evidence, tire track and shoe wear identification, arson debris analysis, and video analysis and enhancement.
Q: What is the most common drug submitted to the laboratory for examination?
A: Marijuana (64 percent).
Q: Who uses the crime lab?
A: All of the Johnson County police departments, the District Attorney and the Sheriff’s Office. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies also use the lab’s services.
Q: How many reports does the lab produce in a year?
A: The facility’s personnel issued 4,494 lab reports in 2007, a 36 percent increase from 2006.
Juvenile Intake and Assessment
Q: How many juveniles are processed through the Juvenile Intake and Assessment
Center each year?
A: In 2007, 1,931 youth were processed; that number includes both juvenile offenders and Children in Need of Care.
Q: What is the purpose of Juvenile Intake and Assessment?
A: Juveniles taken into custody are assessed to determine their needs and their risk to the community. Intake and assessment staff determine whether the juvenile should be released to a parent or guardian, placed in an out-of-home placement, or placed in juvenile detention.
Q: How many juveniles are in jail versus out of jail in programs or on diversion?
A: Only 5 percent of juveniles in the criminal justice system are actually in-custody in detention. The other 95 percent of juveniles in the criminal justice system are in programs or on diversion.
Juvenile Detention
Q: Where is the Johnson County Juvenile Detention Center located?
A: 915 West Spruce in Olathe.
Q: Which juvenile offenders are placed in the Detention Center?
A: Those who are deemed too dangerous because of the nature of their alleged crimes or because of their dangerous behavior; and those for whom no other placement alternatives exist.
Q: How many juveniles are admitted to the Juvenile Detention Center each year?
A: In 2007, 1,214 juveniles were admitted to the Center.
Q: What is the average daily population of juveniles in the Juvenile Detention Center?
A: The average daily population fluctuates from month to month. In the year 2007, it averaged 67.9. During May 2007, however, the average daily population was 78.9.
Q: How many juveniles can the Detention Center hold?
A: There are 70 beds available. Because the facility houses both males and females and must separate more dangerous offenders from less dangerous offenders, the functional capacity is only 63.
Q: Where does the County house the juveniles when the Detention Center is over capacity?
A: They are housed in other juvenile detention centers in the state, most frequently in Shawnee, Crawford, and Geary counties. Johnson County pays for the cost of housing the juveniles in the other counties.
Juvenile House Arrest
Q: How many juveniles are under House Arrest in Johnson County?
A: In 2007, the average daily population of juvenile offenders under House Arrest was 52. In 2007, 599 new juvenile offenders were admitted to House Arrest.
Q: How successful is the House Arrest program?
A: In 2007, 489 offenders completed the program successfully (without further law enforcement contact); and 104 offenders failed the program and were revoked and detained. In 2007, the success rate was 87 percent of all offenders in the program.
Jails
Q: How many people are booked into jail each year in Johnson County?
A: In 2007, 18,269 people were booked into jail. That’s equivalent to about 3 percent of the county’s population.
Q: How many people does the county keep in jail?
A: On an average day in 2007, the county’s inmate population was 863.
Q: How many people can the county jails hold?
A: Currently the county jails can hold 533 inmates.
Q: Where are the excess inmates housed?
A: Overflow inmates are housed in 18 contracted county jails in Kansas.
Q: How many adult inmates are in jail versus out of jail programs or on diversion?
A: Using a single-day snapshot from December 2007, about 81 percent of people in Johnson County’s criminal justice system were participating in diversion or other programs. Of the other 19 percent, 3.5 percent were in the Community Corrections Residential Center and 15.5 percent were in custody in the county jails or contracted county jails.
Department of Corrections
Q: How does the Department of Corrections differ from the Sheriff’s Office?
A: The Department of Corrections manages adult and juvenile community corrections programs including Adult Intensive Supervision, Adult Residential Center, Juvenile Intensive Supervision and Case Management, Juvenile Intake and Assessment, and Juvenile Detention in Johnson County.
The Sheriff’s Office manages County investigations, patrol, crime lab, two jails, Courthouse Security, and booking duties for Juvenile Intake and Assessment.
Q: How is the Department of Corrections funded?
A: Most of the community supervision programs listed above are funded by grants from the Kansas Department of Corrections and the Kansas Juvenile Justice Authority. Juvenile Detention and a majority of the costs for the Adult Residential Center are funded by the County’s General Fund.
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