EVANSVILLE — The search for a solution to Vanderburgh County's jail overcrowding problem led Sheriff Dave Wedding and a delegation to Florida on Monday.
Wedding, jail commander Major Chad Ferguson and architectural representatives toured the Putnam County, Florida jail for ideas on designing and operating a larger detention facility.
Over the weekend the number of Vanderburgh County inmates exceeded 800, Wedding said. Nearly all of those inmates are being housed in a jail designed to hold 553.
Wedding said about 100 inmates are being housed in six other area jails. However, he said other counties face overcrowding problems too, making it increasingly difficult to find additional facilities to hold Vanderburgh's inmates.
"It's almost a full-time job dealing with where to put our inmates," Wedding said.
It's a problem that has occupied much of his time since taking in office in 2014.
The Sheriff's Office has been looking as far as Illinois and Kentucky for help. Wedding said local officials will visit Daviess County, Kentucky, next week both to tour its jail and ask about extra space.
Wedding said he is hoping to find space in other jails for 30-50 more inmates.
Late last year the Indiana Department of Correction gave Vanderburgh County six months to develop a plan to address both its amount of beds and space and jail staff. County officials have formed a Jail Blue Ribbon Committee to consider solutions. There will be a public meeting of the committee at 3 p.m. Monday, April 2.
At full staff, it takes 85 confinement officers and 11 supervisors to run the county jail, Wedding said. While not all those positions are filled, he said the Sheriff's Office is seeking applicants for the jobs.
In addition, he said the county has received state funding for three more community corrections employees. That freed up three confinement officers to return to work at the jail rather than assisting with work release and other programs.
Wedding said the jail population has been exacerbated by a recent surge in both violent and nuisance crimes as local law enforcement crackdown on gang and drug activity.
He expects about 10,000 inmates will have been booked into jail by the end of the year, although only about 700 of those will have remained there. Many of those are inmates being held pre-trial, a situation which makes it makes it difficult to shift them to other jails where they cannot readily be brought to court or visit with attorneys.
In addition, about 100 inmates are low-level felony offenders from the Indiana Department of Correction which the legislature now mandates counties to house locally rather than in state prison.
"If I could put a shovel in the ground tomorrow (to build a new jail), I would," Wedding said.