Bigger Fees, Less Inmates: Connection?
Inmate bookings at the Sedgwick County KS Jail were down 9 percent last year, but it wasn’t clear whether the drop was caused by the county’s decision to charge cities for the use of the jail.
In Wichita, which last year ran up a bill of more than $3 million in jail fees that it has refused to pay, bookings were down 10.4 percent. In the six other cities that haven’t been paying the fees, bookings were down an average of 8.6 percent. In the nine cities that have paid the fees, bookings were up 7.7 percent …
[E]ven though the number of bookings has slowed, it was more than offset by an increase in the average length of stay of inmates. “It’s still growing,” Sheriff Bob Hinshaw said of the jail’s daily population. “It’s just not growing as fast.” Hinshaw said the number of bookings has slowed in recent years thanks to a new day-reporting center and other programs that offer alternatives to incarceration … Hinshaw said Sedgwick County continues to house nearly 300 of its inmates in other counties. Jail officials recently have been looking into the feasibility of using the recently closed Labette County Boot Camp or other unused state prison facilities as possible sources of extra jail beds. “We’re starting to run out of options,” Hinshaw said.
The story from the Wichita Eagle has a lot more information about the County’s dispute with its cities.
County-City Issues, KS Sedgewick County, Kansas, Overcrowding