ORIGINAL REPORT, 3:05 PM: If you think some crime suspects get out of jail too quickly now – wait until next month, when, according to a story KING 5 broke last night, the county might not allow some of them to get booked into jail at all – they’ll be brought downtown, processed, and released. We just heard about this when Mayor Murray’s office sent a news release, saying he has sent County Executive Dow Constantine a letter objecting to it:

Mayor Ed Murray has serious concerns about a King County proposal to release additional felony suspects in property crime cases immediately after booking in downtown Seattle. The mayor outlined his concerns today in a letter to King County Executive Dow Constantine. “This proposed plan presents an unacceptable public safety risk to the residents of Seattle and will undermine our mutual efforts to reduce drug and property crimes,” wrote Murray. “This proposal also has serious potential policing and budget implications for the City of Seattle.” (Full letter embedded below) On Feb. 1, King County plans to reduce the inmate population by instituting a “book-and-release” policy for several felony drug and property offenses, including auto theft, hit and run (with injury), malicious mischief, reckless endangerment, stolen property, theft, vehicle prowl and drug possession. The proposed plan will mean that suspects arrested for these crimes in communities around King County will be brought to Seattle to be booked and then released onto the streets of downtown. Currently, judges individually assess each suspect booked at the jail to decide whether to hold them pending trial. The proposed County plan would eliminate a judge’s review in favor of a presumption of release for these non-violent offenses. In his letter, Murray outlined alternatives to reduce burdens on the jail (reducing the time between a suspect’s arraignment and trial), as well as reduce impacts on the city (remote booking or mandatory return transportation for suspects brought downtown for booking from jurisdictions outside of Seattle).

We’ve asked both the county and city for a copy of the memo that Murray says police chiefs received this week, and we’ve asked the executive’s office for reaction to Murray’s letter. We’ll add whatever we hear back.

5:13 PM UPDATE: To answer journalists’ questions including ours, the executive’s office set up a conference call last hour, and your editor here was one of four who asked questions. The toplines:

*This is a done deal at this point – it was part of the county budget approved by the County Council and Executive.

*Rather than a budget cut, this was a budget request that didn’t get granted. The County’s director of adult/juvenile detention William Hayes, one of three county reps on the call, said it would cost $5.2 million to open another section of the jail to handle the increase in daily population expected over the next year if everything was status quo – last year’s average daily county jail/detention population (Seattle and Kent) was 1900, 50 over projections, and this year was expected to be 1920. There’s room at the jail – but not the personnel to staff it. That request was not granted. This policy is the result.

*The key talking point was that this would mean a difference of a few hours or few days in time most of these suspects would have spent in jail. It was also stressed that police will have the option to say, we don’t want this suspect released. In response to that, we pointed out that police might not get immediate access to the suspect’s full record, or warrant status. The county reps say that if technical problems keep them from finding out whether there’s a warrant out for someone, they won’t be released until the status can be verified.

*Overall, the county reps (also including Constantine spokesperson Chad Lewis and a budget-office staffer, Krista Camenzind) said a “chronic structural gap with the county’s general fund” is to blame. 70 percent of the general fund goes to criminal justice, from deputies to prosecutors to defenders to judges to jails, and it’s been going down even as the population grows, with a $54 million gap to cover this time around. We asked, couldn’t the civil system have been cut instead of the criminal? Reply: It already had been.

*We asked for a copy of the memo that the mayor mentioned, received this week by police chiefs around the county pointing out which crimes this generally would affect. The county reps say that was a draft memo and they don’t have a final version yet because suggestions were made by chiefs at a meeting yesterday and some of them are being incorporated into the final version.

Overall, Lewis summarized, the county considers this change the “best of bad options that are available.” Hayes said it’s not as if the suspects are being set entirely free – they will have to come in for court dates, and even if they fail to appear, “at some point (the legal system) is going to catch up to them.”

The cynical person might wonder if this is a setup for a forthcoming ballot measure to ask for more criminal-justice funding, we suggested. Lewis said no, there are no plans to seek any kind of a funding measure for public safety; Constantine is pursuing the Best Starts for Kids initiative, Lewis pointed out, an early-childhood initiative that he hopes will reduce the need for criminal justice, years down the road.

ADDED 6:12 PM: The mayor’s office has provided, at our request, the document mentioned in Murray’s letter, circulated to police chiefs earlier this week. Read on for the full text – including the proposed list of crimes; note that not all property crimes are involved – for example, residential-burglary suspects would still be held as they are now, this memo says: