2008 Woodie Awards
Cost of moving inmates soars
Kelli Shaffner - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 2/4/08 Section: Metro
Johnson County officials may have to consider building a new county jail if current trends continue.
The amount spent on the cost to house inmates out of the county - from $447,915 in 2006 to $683,955 in 2007 - is coming close to the point where it would be less expensive to build a new facility, Johnson County Supervisor Pat Harney said.
This information came from the first-ever Johnson County Sheriff's Office report, which compared figures from 2006 and 2007.
The point at which a county should consider constructing another facility is arguable, Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek said.
"It depends on whom you ask - $600,000 to $800,000 is close to being able to afford a new facility," he said.
The fiscal year the county is budgeting for will have an amount of around $800,000 specifically for housing inmates in other counties.
But, in his opinion, Johnson County is not ready to pursue a new jail just yet.
"Quite frankly, when the cost hits a million or more is when people start paying more attention," Pulkrabek said.
But he and Harney said other factors would need to be taken into consideration in terms of cost and expenses, such as the transportation of inmates - especially to counties farther away - and the cost of labor.
The report was meant to let the public know the how busy the Sheriff's Office has been, Pulkrabek said, and he felt the findings were not surprising.
A decrease in the number of State Patrol officers is one of the main reasons the Sheriff's Office is seeing an increase in work, Pulkrabek said.
The Sheriff's Office investigated 625 accidents in 2007, a 61 percent increase over 2006. The state is working on increasing the number of state troopers in Johnson County's district, but Pulkrabek does not expect the change to occur soon.
This became a problem, he said, when his office's overtime costs ballooned and employees' days off were routinely canceled.
"There are the same number of state troopers now as there were in the '70s," he said. "But if there's not a state trooper around, somebody has to respond."
E-mail DI reporter Kelli Shaffner at:
kelli-shaffner@uiowa.edu
The amount spent on the cost to house inmates out of the county - from $447,915 in 2006 to $683,955 in 2007 - is coming close to the point where it would be less expensive to build a new facility, Johnson County Supervisor Pat Harney said.
This information came from the first-ever Johnson County Sheriff's Office report, which compared figures from 2006 and 2007.
The point at which a county should consider constructing another facility is arguable, Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek said.
"It depends on whom you ask - $600,000 to $800,000 is close to being able to afford a new facility," he said.
The fiscal year the county is budgeting for will have an amount of around $800,000 specifically for housing inmates in other counties.
But, in his opinion, Johnson County is not ready to pursue a new jail just yet.
"Quite frankly, when the cost hits a million or more is when people start paying more attention," Pulkrabek said.
But he and Harney said other factors would need to be taken into consideration in terms of cost and expenses, such as the transportation of inmates - especially to counties farther away - and the cost of labor.
The report was meant to let the public know the how busy the Sheriff's Office has been, Pulkrabek said, and he felt the findings were not surprising.
A decrease in the number of State Patrol officers is one of the main reasons the Sheriff's Office is seeing an increase in work, Pulkrabek said.
The Sheriff's Office investigated 625 accidents in 2007, a 61 percent increase over 2006. The state is working on increasing the number of state troopers in Johnson County's district, but Pulkrabek does not expect the change to occur soon.
This became a problem, he said, when his office's overtime costs ballooned and employees' days off were routinely canceled.
"There are the same number of state troopers now as there were in the '70s," he said. "But if there's not a state trooper around, somebody has to respond."
E-mail DI reporter Kelli Shaffner at:
kelli-shaffner@uiowa.edu
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