The Buchanan County Jail is overflowing and the high number of inmates is creating shortages of supplies and could cause some employees to have to put in longer hours.
Last week, the sheriff’s office issued a press release stating that the jail population was at 248 inmates. The average population is between 170 and 200. Col. Bill Puett with the sheriff’s office said they are keeping some inmates two or three to a cell in order to deal with the overcrowding. He said the max capacity is 224.
“Unfortunately if people commit crimes then they’re going to be committed to jail,” Puett said. “The courts are going to deal with them as they need to deal with them in an appropriate manner and sometimes that means that they are housed and we have to deal with the numbers that we have.”
He said the sheriff’s office wants to try to keep inmates in the Buchanan County Jail rather than moving them to another jail that may or may not have space.
“If we move prisoners out we have to pay for that. Also, we have issues where we move inmates further away from the courts, we move inmates further away from their families, their attorneys, all of those things make it a lot more difficult. If we house people an hour away we have time and cost and moving the inmate whenever there’s a court hearing, attorneys would have to travel an hour to see their client, families would have to travel,” Puett said. “If we can, we try to keep them here and look for solutions and sometimes that’s providing them space with pallets on the floor. Doing that type of stuff to keep them here and keep them more accessible for their families, the courts and their attorneys’.”
He said the jail started seeing a spike in it’s population about a month ago.
“It’s been gradually going up but it’s been more noticeable in the last month or so,” Puett said. “We have a lot of violent criminals in jail right now, we’ve seen a lot of drug arrests. We’ve had everything from property crimes all the way up to murder and sexual assault, those types of things. We have it all.”
The high number of inmates can cause issues with the additional cost for food, bedding and clothing.
“We have to provide basic supplies for inmates whether they have the funds to buy them or not,” Puett said. “It’s always a drain on resources. Right now we’re managing. We have had to order in some more supplies.”
The sheriff’s office is currently extending visiting hours.
“The jail staff is going to start earlier and go later on visitation days to assist families to make sure they are able to get in and visit,” Puett said. “Currently they have been able to get everybody in up to this point but obviously with an increase population we want to make sure we have enough spots for that. With attorney visitation we are going to extend the hours that they can get in to see their clients.”
Puett said the extended hours will start immediately. He said general visitation hours will be extended starting Saturday and attorney visitation will be extended at the beginning of this week. However, that also means staff members will be working longer hours.
“We’re looking at probably some overtime hours to accommodate some of these issues,” Puett said. “That’s just what we have to do to make sure stuff is accomplished.”