For years DeKalb County has been warned about the DeKalb County Jail. Almost from the day it was expanded over 20 years ago, the facility meant to house just male prisoners, had to start housing female prisoners as well, cutting into its capacity.
In more recent years, the county has been warned by Sheriff Patrick Ray and the Tennessee Corrections Institute about deficiencies at the facility that would eventually result in its decertification. The county had been warned that unless the county implemented a plan of action, that showed some sort of good will progress on the issue, the jail would face a drastic reduction in its overall capacity with some sections being shut down.
It was learned last week that time is up on the issue, and that it will cost DeKalb County taxpayers some big money.
TCI officials are requiring that the jail’s number of certifiable beds, currently at 102 (78 males and 24 females), must be reduced to no more than 52 (16 females and 36 males) almost immediately. In addition, the 64-year-old basement portion of the jail, which housed 23 inmates, can no longer be used for that purpose.
Sheriff Ray informed members of the County Commission’s Jail Committee that 29 inmates currently in the jail complex will have to be housed at jails in other counties at a projected cost of $55.40 per day, for a total of more than $1,600 per day. To house that number of inmates for a year it would cost nearly $600,000.
According to Sheriff Ray, that amount does not include the cost of transporting prisoners back and forth for their scheduled court dates here and the time involved in the transports. “You just can’t count the $55.40 a day to house inmates because you will have transportation costs with the vehicles, fuel, and officer costs to go pick them up and these extra costs will inflate my budget.”
Among the TCI’s issued are portions of the jail do not meet the state’s per prisoner square footage clear floor space requirement and the jail basement has no natural light.
“We now know that (some cells) are no longer certified housing,” said Sheriff Ray. “We have a letter (from TCI) confirming that and they have told us that so liability rests with us (county) do to something with them (prisoners). We were at 102 beds but now we are down to 52 certified beds. We are to close the basement that is not certifiable housing anymore. There are about 23 people down there in the basement today.”
“We already know we will run into some problems because now if we have a prisoner who has been an informant or someone who can’t get along with another prisoner in the jail annex, two cells in the basement that gave us a place for them to go are no longer available to us and we don’t have that luxury. Our game plan is to take the women prisoners (from main floor of the older portion of jail), after the judge and district attorney general go through the list of them and see what we need to do in placing them wherever we can throughout the state, put our sex offenders in the women’s cells (after the women are moved out), and put our trustees in the side cells (main floor of older building). That will get all the (male) prisoners out of the basement (older building). We will move them as quickly as we can but every time we arrest a female we will have to find a jail to house them if they can’t make bond and every time they have a court date we will have to go get them and then take them back.”
Sheriff Ray told the jail committee the specific jail deficiencies, saying, “There were some questions about natural lighting in the max dorm (jail annex) and in the old (building) main cell. They want us to go in there and cut holes out into walls (to allow for natural light). There are some old windows there in the old part of the jail with metal across them so we are hoping we can do this (provide natural lighting) there instead of going through the brick because the jail has a lot of rebar in the walls. We have to take all the bunks out of the max day room (jail annex) and there are probably three or four sets of bunks in there that will have to come out.”
“Where the air conditioner units come down in the main annex dorm, when the air comes out it hits the wall where there is some dust. They want us to wash the walls before they come back to do an official inspection because they said we would never pass inspection unless we do. In order to do this cleaning, we will have to get somebody to come in there (jail annex) with a high rise lift or scaffolding.”
“In the side cells where we house women (main floor of older building), they have told us we can house no more than one inmate per cell (instead of two). We told them that is where we had planned to move the trustees (when the females are moved out) so they told us if we leave the side cell doors open where inmates can get into the hallway, they would allow two inmates in each side cell because there is a steel door at the end of that hallway that comes into the employee hallway and the prisoners would still be locked in, just not necessarily in the cells all the time.”
Sheriff Ray he is working in cooperation from the criminal court judges to find solutions. “We have talked to at least one of the (criminal court) judges and we will talk to the other two judges this week to see if there are any prisoners eligible to be released. One of the judges had talked about maybe allowing prisoners, who are nearing the end of their sentences, to do community service and for us to keep up with that so we might see if we could get with (County Mayor) Matt (Adcock) to let them come over to the dumpsites and pick up trash or unload vehicles, whatever we need them to do to get their time in.”
The county will have to look at either expanding the current jail, building a Criminal Justice Center with a jail, courtrooms, and offices combined, or renovating an existing property. In the meantime, county taxpayers are on the hook for paying for prisoners to be housed in other counties.
