By Jane Prendergast and Sharon Coolidge
Enquirer staff writer

Crowding at Hamilton County's main jail has been alleviated for now, with the sheriff releasing 15 women early this week and letting more than 50 others charged with minor crimes to leave the facility without staying overnight.

Sheriff Simon Leis emphasized that the crowding again proved his need for a new jail. He announced Thursday that starting Wednesday night, he let some inmates out before they'd served their entire sentences. He also said his deputies would again be letting arrested people out after processing them only, meaning they'd be booked into the facility and assigned a date to return for court, but they would not be kept overnight.

By 4 a.m. Thursday, the total number of inmates in Leis' four facilities hit 2,218 - 1,909 men and 309 women. The sheriff said that was the most ever recorded since the facilities were under his control.

Included in that number were 1,215 inmates in the downtown Justice Center, plus another 40 waiting to be processed in. The center is under a federal court mandate not to exceed 1,240.

Three of the women let go early were serving time for soliciting prostitution, the jail records show. Among the others released early:

• A 38-year-old from Westwood who'd been incarcerated since July 27 for violating her probation, court records show, on a 2003 charge of driving without a license;

• A 19-year-old from Over-the-Rhine who served more than four months of her six-month sentence for cashing a stolen or forged $60 check;

• And a 41-year-old from Over-the-Rhine, jailed since July 16 after she was convicted of criminal trespassing for staying on the property of a Winton Terrace market after she'd repeatedly been told to leave. She served more than half of her 30-day sentence.

County Commissioner Todd Portune was critical of Leis' decision to release inmates, saying the sheriff acted too quickly.

"We may have more inmates today than we ever had, but the fact of the matter is, there are fewer inmates than federal mandate allows us to hold," Portune said. "We shouldn't be putting people on the street till we cross that threshold."

Leis, seeking his fifth, four-year term, said he has been asking for years for a new jail. But Portune said he just asked this commission in the spring, and that both Portune and Commissioner Phil Heimlich said they would deal with the request during the upcoming budget process.

Total capacity at Leis' four detention facilities is 2,270.

But that number can be reduced, sometimes dramatically he says, by factors like men and women having to be housed separately and violent and suicidal prisoners having to be kept away from others

And some of the beds are reserved for certain offenses, such as the 60 at Turning Point, a program for people with multiple drunken-driving convictions.

Other justice system officials acknowledged that the county needs a new jail, including Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge William Mallory.

He said he fears the public will blame judges for not keeping people locked up.

"This is a signal to criminals that they have free reign, that there are no consequences for criminal acts," Mallory said.

When crowding was bad a decade ago, the judge said, he remembered giving convicted criminals slips of paper that told them to come back nine months later to serve their sentences.

"We don't want to get to that point again," he said.

Charlie Rubenstein, chief deputy prosecutor, said the danger of overcrowding and releases is "that people don't have a fear being incarcerated. The deterrent effect of jail isn't there."

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E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com, scoolidge@enquirer.com