Pubdate: Thu, 31 Mar 2005
Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
Copyright: 2005 Lexington Herald-Leader
Contact:  http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240
Author: Lee Mueller

BIG COSTS FORCE SOME COUNTIES TO CLOSE SMALL JAILS

Larger Lockups Paid To Keep State Inmates

JACKSON - Breathitt County has become the 37th Kentucky county to lose
its jail since 1983, when the state began enforcing new standards on
old jailhouses, some of which were compared to medieval dungeons.

That was then.

Now officials in counties with small jails say they're closing their
doors because they can't afford to keep them open.

"Every one of us has got a bigger pipe going out than we've got coming
in," Breathitt Judge-Executive Lewis Warrix said Tuesday, referring to
costs.

The expense of maintaining the 12-bed jail in Jackson -- remodeled and
reopened in 1996 at a cost of $1 million -- "had just gone out of
sight," he said.

The Breathitt County facility is the second small Eastern Kentucky
jail to close during the last three months -- and a third could be in
jeopardy.

Knott County, which spent $1.2 million two years ago to refurbish its
14-bed jail, shut it down in December. In Estill County, where
finances forced a 15-bed jail to shut down briefly in 2003, the fiscal
court is considering closing it again, Judge-Executive Wallace Taylor
said yesterday.

Even as the number of inmates in Kentucky jails has increased by 13
percent since last March -- swollen by a flood of drug-related arrests
- -- the closing of small facilities comes as no shock to most
corrections experts. "Every county needs a jail," said Knott County
Sheriff Ray Bolen. "But they're just too costly."

A bigger jail might not be better, but it needs to be big enough to
house prisoners for the state or other counties to survive, experts
say.

"Basically, it really takes a facility of 400 to 500 beds for
economies of scale to start taking place," said John Rees,
commissioner of the state Department of Corrections. "The state and
federal mandates for operating a jail are expensive," he said.

The state still has 78 full-service jails and 15 so-called
"life-safety" jails for misdemeanor offenders. They housed 14,629
inmates on March 4, 2004, and 16,536 on March 4 this year.

Most of the remaining small jails are in Western Kentucky in Hancock
(10 beds) Livingston (12), Russell (18), and Trigg and Crittenden counties

But McLean County recently shut down its small jail and began housing
inmates in Ohio County, said David Osborne, who is jailer in Daviess
County and a Kentucky Jailers Association board member.

"It just gets more expensive every year," Osborne said.

Plans for regional jails across the state, jointly funded by several
counties, have mostly failed to materialize. Four counties use the Big
Sandy Regional Detention Center in Paintsville and three counties so
far use the Three Forks Regional Detention Center in
Beattyville.

Osborne, whose jail had 676 inmates this week in a facility with 590
beds, said only a third of his inmates are from Daviess County.

"Where you really make your money is housing state prison inmates," he
said.

The Daviess County jail is receiving $26 a day for housing 418 state
Department of Corrections inmates "and the General Assembly just
increased the per diem to $30 a day," he said.

The Daviess County jail has a budget of nearly $6 million, but only $1
million comes from local sources, Osborne said. Most of it is
generated by housing state inmates.

"That's why these small jails are having such a hard time," he said.
"They're only big enough to hold their own inmates -- and their county
has to pay every bit of that.

"It's a bottomless pit, so to speak."

Breathitt County Deputy Jailer Steve Turner conceded that the old
Jackson County jail is not big enough to pay for itself. At one point,
the county paid $151,000 to design a 75-bed jail as part of a new
judicial center, he said, but that part of the project was canceled.

"A jail is not supposed to be a money-making business," Turner said.
"This is going to be a hardship on our inmates' families."

While administrators of larger jails wondered last week what effect
the new state prison in Elliott County will have on their state inmate
count, large detention centers, such as Daviess County's, continued to
look for inmates, Osborne said.

"We got 26 from Perry County last week," he said. "I'm not sure what
the issue was, but I was under the impression they had emptied out all
the state prisoners from the Perry County jail."

Deputy Perry County Jailer Rickey Neace said the new jail there has
134 beds and nearly 200 inmates, but Department of Corrections
spokeswoman Lisa Lamb said the Hazard jail has more serious problems
than overcrowding.

Lamb said the state recently decided to remove its inmates from the
Hazard jail after a two-day inspection.

"When the commissioner (Rees) walked in, he described it as total
chaos," Lamb said.

When Rees told Perry County Jailer Mac Feltner he was going to pull
out state inmates, Feltner vigorously told him to go ahead, Lamb said,
"and I'm leaving out the expletives."

Feltner could not be reached last night, but the Hazard Herald
reported yesterday that Perry Fiscal Court was considering shutting
down the jail until the situation is resolved.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin