Sharing jail costs could help

Published 12:00 am Monday, April 7, 2003

If Lawrence County were to get a new jail, it could share the operating costs with others.

During an inspection of the Lawrence County Jail in September, an inspector for the Bureau of Adult Detention noted that the Lawrence County Jail did not comply with seven standards upon which it was inspected. One of those areas was providing at least 50 feet of sleeping space and 35 feet of activity space per prisoner. Even though the facility has beds for 58 inmates, the jail inspector recommended that the jail's capacity be reduced to 26 based on its space.

The Lawrence County Jail, built in 1974, already has more inmates than what the facility can handle. These extra inmates are housed in other county jails in Ohio at an extra cost of at least $40 per day, per inmate.

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Earlier, the extra inmates were being held in Gallia, Jackson, Ross and Miami counties. Now, because the overcrowding problem has spread to Gallia, Jackson and Ross counties, nine inmates are being held in the Clinton County Jail in Wilmington, a four-hour drive from Ironton.

While the Bureau of Adult Detention has allocated $35,000 per bed for county jail construction, the bureau has allocated as much as $42,000 per bed for multi-county facilities, Scott Blaugh, bureau chief, said.

A multi-jurisdictional facility is working in Northwest Ohio, according to its executive director.

"We're the greatest-kept secret in the state of Ohio," Jim Dennis, executive director of the Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio (CCNO) in Stryker, said.

CCNO, opened in 1987, is a facility that houses inmates from six jurisdictions: Defiance, Fulton, Henry, Lucas and Williams counties and the city of Toledo. The facility is governed by an 18-member board which includes three representatives from each jurisdiction.

Those six jurisdictions proportionately share the cost of operating the facility, based on the number of beds allocated. The city of Toledo has the most with 254 beds and being responsible for 39.56 percent of the operating costs. If one jurisdiction has more inmates than it has beds, it can use beds from another jurisdiction and reimburse it accordingly.

Having one large facility for the six jurisdictions has been a great way to share costs, Dennis said. Instead of five laundry facilities or kitchens for five jails, construction of a jail like CCNO will only involve constructing one jail with one of each of these types of facilities.

CCNO itself transports inmates, not local sheriff's departments. Two routes have been established to keep uniformity and consistency with the jurisdictions CCNO serves, according to the jail's Web site. Its transportation system consists of two 44-passenger buses, one 40-passenger bus and a 15-passenger van. The transportation department has also assisted local law enforcement when the potential exists for a mass arrest such as a warrant sweep or controversial rally.

To avoid high costs when transporting inmates to court, CCNO has also used video confrencing, Dennis said.

"Regional jails deserve discussion," he said. "We know it works for us."

However, multi-county facilities have not been a popular choice throughout the state. CCNO is one of only four facilities of its type in Ohio. The main reasons why this choice is not popular is because of increased transportation costs and lack of local control.

Lawrence County Sheriff Tim Sexton said he would prefer to have a new jail for only Lawrence County for those reasons. However, he is not totally opposed to a regional jail.

Gallia County Sheriff Dave Martin, however, is opposed to the idea.

"I don't like it. I don't want to lose the county jail," he said.

Now, the facility, built in 1963, has capacity for all of its inmates, but a few months ago, the facility had 10 more inmates than what the 24-bed facility could hold, Martin said. All female inmates are housed outside the county because if only one woman is in the jail, she alone will take up the block that could have been used for three inmates.

Martin has been working with the Gallia County Commission to get a new facility, but wants the county to have its own because of transportation concerns.

CCNO is blessed to have highway transportation between the county seats it serves, Dennis said.