Faced with an overpopulated jail for years, county officials are open to discussing mitigation options, but disagreements on how far the county should go remain.
At the Howard County Council Feb. 25 meeting, council President Jim Papacek said he thought the county should be “proactive” and consider building new jail pods to increase the Howard County Jail’s fixed-bed capacity, which is currently 364.
“No one likes it, but the time is coming for one new pod at least,” Papacek said. “I think we ought to be proactive and have a plan in place. We’re not going to build it next week, but I think just discussing and getting a plan in place is something we need to do. There’s going to be an inmate some day who’s going to file a suit because of the overcrowding.”
Howard County Sheriff Jerry Asher said he agrees that the county needs to be proactive about the jail population, adding that the major concern for the sheriff’s department is the female population, which is consistently at 100 or above.
If the jail were to add a pod, both Asher and Papacek say it should be an all-female one. The current jail was originally built to house only 32 female inmates. In 2013, the jail reconfigured a male pod to house the extra female inmates.
Overcrowding at the jail has been a hot topic issue for years despite local efforts to lower the number of inmates through an all-male work release program and an extra magistrate who started last fall to quicken inmates’ releases and lessen the caseload for the county’s five other judges who run one of the most-stressed courts in the state.
But while officials say both measures have helped keep some inmates out of the general population at the jail, inmate levels have still remained well in the 400s for the past couple of years. As of late February, there were 462 inmates at the jail.
The county often finds itself sending 30 inmates to Miami County to be housed in their jail. The county also plans on sending 30 to Tipton County’s new jail, but more keep coming in, and it’s not always possible to send inmates to nearby county jails since the majority of Indiana jails are facing overcrowding problems of their own.
“It just keeps creeping back up,” Asher said of the jail population.
Both Papacek and Asher said they would like to avoid being forced via lawsuit or mandate to lower or cap the inmate population like other counties were, such as Vigo and Allen counties.
“I remember years ago in Delaware County kept procrastinating, and a federal judge came in and said ‘This is what you’re going to build,’’ Papacek said. “Their county council said ‘We don’t have the money,’ but the judge said ‘That’s not my problem.’ We don’t want to get into that place.”
If the county were wanting to add onto the jail, it would take at least one to two years to plan and complete if the process started soon. That action would have to come from the commissioners.
But County Commissioners Paul Wyman and Jack Dodd say they’d like to see exactly how the current approaches – the work release program and extra magistrate – and the addition of a female work release program fare before committing to new pods.
Wyman, who was instrumental in starting the male work release program, said the commissioners are continuing to focus energy on opening a female work release program later this year.
“If we can get that done, that should have a real positive impact on the jail population,” Wyman said. “I am fairly confident we should see some positive numbers throughout the remainder of the year due to those various things we’re working on. We want to make sure we see all those play out before we spend the money to build on the jail.”
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