Already Stretched, Parish Jail Takes In More
The St. Tammany Parish LA Sheriff’s Office is giving more and more beds in the parish jail to inmates who have already been sentenced by the state, netting the agency millions of dollars a year needed to keep the jail running but crowding out local suspects who have not yet stood trial.
About two-thirds of the jail’s 1,000 beds now go to prisoners held for state or federal agencies that pay for their incarceration, forcing law enforcement in St. Tammany into a complicated dance to determine which new offenders should be held and which can be released until their court date. Throughout December, the jail was at or near capacity. About 595 beds were taken by state prisoners, and 48 beds went to federal inmates. Since August, at least half of the jail’s population has been made up of state and federal inmates.
Sheriff Jack Strain described the growing “for-profit” prisoner population as a desperation move, aimed at keeping the jail afloat in the face of a yearly $6 million budget shortfall. About $10 million in annual sales tax revenue is earmarked for the jail, but $16 million is needed to operate it every year … Holding paid prisoners means officials at the jail, which typically bumps up against its federally mandated maximum capacity, must regularly let new offenders out on lesser bonds more often than they would otherwise. And faced with the prospect of a greater shortfall if sales tax revenue drops further in a sputtering economy, Strain said he has called on parish officials to help plug the gap …
The Sheriff’s Office receives about $24 a day for each inmate it holds for the state and about $43 a day for each federal inmate. These inmates brought in about $4.4 million for the jail in 2008, according to statistics from the Sheriff’s Office, offsetting the majority of last year’s $6 million shortfall. It will cost about $10.6 million to pay for the salaries and benefits of jail employees this year, according to the facility’s budget. Other operating expenses make up another $3 million of the budget, and payments on the bonds used to build the jail will cost about $1.5 million. The rest of the budget is spent on repairs, maintenance, supplies and other needs …
Mandeville Police Capt. Ron Ruple said officers in his department frequently must consider whether to even bring an offender to the jail, or whether minor offenses should be handled with a court summons instead. “This is not a Sheriff’s Office problem. This is a parishwide problem, ” Ruple said. “I think all the municipalities and all the parish leaders need to get together to solve it.”
County-State Issues, Early Release, Federal Payments, LA St Tammany Parish