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Samantha Hayes Reporting Getting out of jail free sounds like a lucky break in a game of Monopoly, but that break does happen for some prisoners, because the jail can't take care of them. In a recent case that came to our attention, a suspect is believed to have used her pregnancy to avoid arrest and ultimately stay out of jail.
Of course you wonder, can that really happen? The answer is, it can. The Corrections Chief at the county jail provided us with a candid look inside the facility and how they decide who stays behind bars and who goes.
Almost every month in the last year, Tracey Renae Soules was in trouble for stealing other people's property. She's in jail now, but it took a while. Soules even allegedly stole items out of a Vice Principal's purse at Glendale Middle school. But when caught, she wasn't arrested. That was last October, when she claimed to be pregnant, according to the police report.
Chief Rollin Cook, Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office: "One of the significant things is a pregnant female and she's in the last month of her pregnancy."
Police and the jail have case by case discretion to arrest and book in jail or not. Corrections Chief Rollin Cook says pregnancy can be one of several "health conditions" not accommodated at the jail.
Chief Rollin Cook: "People with obvious fractures, internal bleeding, severely high blood pressure."
And sometimes prisoners know it and use it.
Chief Rollin Cook: "I think often times the prisoners know the different ways of getting around coming into the jail, but we have a very good record system that keeps track of those things."
The answer to that problem could be in an area of the jail designed like a hospital, with hospital beds in secure units where prisoners with potentially severe medical problems would be taken care of. But officials say because of lack of funding, they sit empty.
What they do have is a sort of jail Insta-Care. If a prisoner's medical conditions can't be treated there, his alleged crimes and cost of treatment are considered before release.
Chief Rollin Cook: "We've incurred 600 thousand dollars worth of medical bills of prisoners that we currently have in 2006, dealing from various things -- cancers, HIV treatment. That puts the sheriff in a tough spot, having to be the person to decide if the person is going to be out of the street doing drugs or are we going to allow them into the jail."
The sheriff's department says if a suspect is of high risk to public safety, they try to make some kind of arrangement so release is not an option. The department says it's a frustrating situation that's dealt with constantly.
