Rising inmate count an issue
Loudon County Sheriff’s Office will ask Loudon County
Commission for roughly $130,000 in new money at the March meeting to
help deal with a rising county jail inmate population.
Sheriff Tim Guider also hopes to transfer $52,850
from the sheriff’s office budget to the jail budget. “About a year
ago we were running 130-135 or so,” Guider said. “We’re running now
about 30 more.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” he added. “Unless
it’s still the severity of the opioid thing where more little crimes
are committed — the thefts, the fraudulent uses of credit cards, the
fraud in general, the petty thefts, a lot of Walmart shoplifting and
the DUIs.”
Officers are asked to consider the severity of the
crime before bringing them in, but LCSO Chief Deputy Jimmy Davis
said “some just need to be in jail.”
Average daily inmate jail population is 168, Davis
said. On Friday, the population was 157.
“Our general rule what we try to do is if we’re over
150 inmates, we don’t want any less than four corrections staff
working,” Davis said. “So like the sheriff said, you’ve got one
designated for your booking and intake and one designated for your
control room. Used to when our population went down years ago, your
booking officer if there’s not someone in the back door right then,
they could generally go around and help with walk-throughs and serve
medication or food orders.
“Now we have to use what has housing,” he added. “So
those two holding cells in the back, they don’t have restrooms in
them, so somebody has to be back there to monitor them. We have
people in the hallway, so we have to let them out to use the
bathroom and just overall to take care of them so somebody has to be
back there.”
The jail is certified to hold 91 inmates. The county
regained certification in September after Tennessee Corrections
Institute took away the designation in June 2016 largely because of
overcrowding.
Guider said there are no concerns of losing
certification again because the county is making progress on a jail
expansion. Jail bids are expected to open March 8 at the county
office building.
“I’m scared to death because this is the slow season,
and so normally history shows in the winter months our numbers are
down,” Jake Keener, LCSO jail administrator, said. “The fact that
they’ve been consistently breaking records the entire time, I fear
the summer. Of course, September 2019 we’re supposed to walk into
the new facility, the fear is that’s going to be full the day we
walk in. Just the numbers are crazy.”
About $10,000 of the requested funding increase is
for medical, $77,000 is for drugs and medical supplies and about
$30,000 is for food service for the extra inmates. About $35,000
will be for deputy overtime, which Keener said is largely a response
to the high inmate count.
Commission during its February workshop focused on
the cost in medical-related expenditures. Davis focused on two
patients as an example.
“In the calendar year from January to December of
2017, we spent $42,041.97 on his medication,” Davis said. “So you
take half of that from July to the end of the year it’s roughly
around $21,000. We had another inmate that was here … that was
sentenced to a rehab, walked off from rehab, we charged him with
escape and his sentence was five months in the county jail. He was
$20,204 and that was from July to November ‘17.”
Expenditures for drugs and medical supplies on a
given year is just “your best educated guess,” Davis said,
noting the number fluctuates.
Guider said LCSO is also on the hook for $102,949
a year for Southern Health Partners, which provides customized
health care to city and county detention centers across 13
states. The jail has a nurse on staff 40 hours a week.
“They charge a certain amount of the annual fee
based on the number of inmates,” Guider said. “Then, like for
now, we had to re-up it in November to 140 inmates, which was
120 before that. Right now, see, that’s based on 140 inmates, so
anything based on over 140 is a per diam per day per inmate.”
At the February workshop, Commissioner Kelly
Littleton-Brewster presented a resolution supporting legislation
establishing Medicaid and TennCare rates as the maximum
chargeable amount for medical services provided to inmates in
jails and prisons.
“So if an inmate has those benefits while they’re
an inmate that ... we could still charge their Medicare and
Medicaid but it was capped,” Davis said. “Anything above that
would be (the) responsibility falls back on the county. Like the
sheriff said, there’s got to be some legislation out there
because usually if an individual comes in and they’re under any
type of state or federal assistance — food stamp, whatever it
could be, TennCare, anything like that — once they become an
inmate those benefits ceased, they’re stopped.”
“It shouldn’t fall back on us,” Guider added. “If
they’re getting it anyway, why don’t they continue to get it?”
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3/5/18