The Jackson County Sheriff's Office (JCSO) posted a breakdown of the October adult in-custody force releases from the county jail.
JCSO says October was the first month the jail was at full operational capacity since March 2020, citing the COVID outbreak as a reason.
The jail maintains a daytime capacity of 285 and increases that number to 300 for overnight bookings.
Jail management says they are constantly making release decisions as new arrestees are brought in by police. Release decisions are sometimes ordered by the court system at hearings, but often require immediate evaluation made by on-duty jail supervisors.
In July of this year, Oregon implemented Senate Bill 48, which eliminates bail upon arrest and requires certain criminal charges be immediately released from custody.
JCSO says more than half the jail population is ineligible for this release due to the nature of their charges. Those ineligible include anyone awaiting trial for murder, manslaughter, sex offenses, and other serious crimes.
The overcrowding even caused the jail to release suspects with higher-level crimes to meet the limited capacity.
The decision to be released is based upon a tool that evaluates risk if returned to the community.
The Sheriff's Office released slides showing statistics related to October's forced releases.
In October, the Jackson County Jail released 257 inmates due to overcrowding and 159 due to SB 48. Police say those released under SB 48 would have likely been released anyway because of overcrowding.
The total number of charges for all people released last month was 931. Out of these, 122 inmates facing felony charges were released due to overcrowding.
74 of the forced release charges were classified as crimes against person charges, where victims were always another person. 17 of these were related to domestic violence incidents.
JCSO says there was 125 crime against property charges from the force releases last month. Crimes against property charges have to do with the suspect obtaining money, property, or some other benefit.
The largest number of charges from force release last month though came from warrants or detainers, which included out-of-county warrants, parole or probation violations, and failure to appear charges.
SB 48 says all failure to appear and probation violation charges should be held pretrial. But due to jail capacity and overcrowding, officials say they were unable to comply with this part of the bill.
Most of the charges from in-custody releases last month were for failure to appear charges -- 378 in total.