EVERETT, Wash. — The city of Everett has a plan to keep some criminals out of jail and clean up the city at the same time.
They want to put low level offenders to work on street projects.
"Well you can watch drug deals go down every day,” Ron Hansen, owner of Hansen Towing in south Everett told us. And he says that's better than what the people who loiter near his business used to do.
"Pretty soon our property was a local toilet, smelled like the local toilet. So I went to City Hall and got a permit to put a fence up,” Hansen explained.
He and other business owners say crimes of public urination, trespass, and criminal mischief are common here.
“We've got to get these people off the streets somehow," Hansen said.
Now the city has a plan they think will help -- putting them back ON the streets.
"Someone who is facing charges in the Everett Municipal Court or potential charges, their case would come to our office, we would determine instead of filing charges to refer them to a work crew program,” explained Everett’s lead prosecutor Hil Kaman.
Kaman says if City Council approves it those people would instead sweep sidewalks and clean roads and storm drains.
If they complete the work crew program, charges are dropped.
“But that again still requires some dollars from the taxpayers to supervise those people,” Hansen said, tentatively on board but skeptical.
We did a little bit of calculating.
The city of Everett sees about 2,000 incidents of the kinds of crimes that qualify for this program every year.
It costs about $100 a day to house someone in the Snohomish County jail, so if just half those people spend one day in jail that's $100,000 a year; the new program will cost $80,000 a day.
Plus Kaman says they'd be working off a fine the prosecutor says most can't pay: “It’s is a form of community restitution.”
Hansen likes that part; he says he shouldn't have to clean up the messes other people make.
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