SALT LAKE CITY — A discussion about the value of human life and the high rate of prisoner suicides in Utah’s county jails devolved Tuesday into a debate about potential financial costs of suicide prevention barriers in the local lockups — and who’s going to pay for them.

Senate Judiciary Committee chair Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, was presenting to his committee HB 259, which mandates the installation of barriers to stop inmates from jumping off the second floors of jail cell blocks.

The bill, which passed the House last week, would establish a grant program to help counties pay for the barriers. Existing barriers are only hip height

Weiler offered a new version of the bill Tuesday with the grant program stripped out. The committee then approved the substitute measure.

Weiler said he took out the grant program after Senate leaders told him that the state budget will add $8 million to increase the state reimbursement to county jails for housing state inmates this year. He said counties should work with the added funding to build the barriers.

The bill arose after county jails experienced another spike in deaths in 2020, several years after a previous wave of deaths sparked added state monitoring of jails.

“What value do you put on human life? I think it’s more than reasonable that we say you need to spend some money and take some steps so somebody can’t jump off a second floor head first onto a concrete floor,” Weiler said.

Arnold Butcher, a Davis County Sheriff’s Office chief deputy, urged Weiler to reconsider imposing a mandate without adequate funding.

“We totally support anything we can do to help make our facility extremely safe. It’s one of the most devastating things a correctional officer faces when he has to deal with the death of an inmate,” Butcher told the committee.

But Butcher said Davis jail officials looked into barrier installation and found it would cost more than $2.5 million. If even a handful of jails install barriers this year, “that $8 million is gone,” Butcher said.

Counties have been agitating for local jails to receive higher reimbursements for housing of state prison inmates for years, and the thought of using the $8 million on something else adds to the angst.

“I would hate to encourage jails to move away from partnering with the Department of Corrections to house inmates,” Butcher said. “Jails are not required” to contract with the state, he said, “and if you make it financially constraining for them to do this,” it makes jails want to move away from the arrangements.

Weiler questioned Butcher’s quoted expense of $2.5 million for barriers in the Davis jail. “I would get another bid if I was running that jail,” he said.

The senator said federal data for 2015-19 showed that Utah’s county jails had a suicide rate of 85 per 100,000 inmates, compared with the national average of 48.

“I keep hearing reports” of inmates jumping off tiers, he said. The Weber and Davis jails have experienced several such incidents over the past few years. Also, a violent inmate “can push people off of these,” he said. “I would say this is a poor design.”

He said the $8 million reimbursement hike “is a huge increase” and that counties have other options to pay for jail improvements, such as bonding.

Lawmakers have been working on jail safety issues for five years with some frustration, Weiler said.

“I’m really disappointed to tell you that not a single jail has come forward and said, ‘Hey, here’s an idea we have to prevent suicides.’ Instead they’re just waiting for the Legislature to basically mandate something that they have to do,” Weiler said. “I think this is the least we can do.”

Sen. Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, said she would like to see from county jails “a better mindset to really face some of these medical issues right now.” Lawmakers listed drug addiction and withdrawal as a big component of suicidal ideation among inmates.

She noted that jails, rightfully, don’t allow inmates to bring weapons into jail. “But having them on a second floor is basically a weapon we are allowing them to hurt themselves with,” she said.

Next is for the bill to be heard by the full Senate.

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