PENDLETON — The number of inmates being housed at the Madison County Detention Center is at its lowest level since Sheriff Scott Mellinger took office.
Mellinger said Thursday at a meeting of the Madison County Tea Party that there were 227 inmates in the jail, which has a capacity of 207.
“It has not been that low since I took office on Jan. 1, 2015,” Mellinger said Friday. “When I took office there were 297 inmates in the jail.”
Earlier this month Mellinger said there were 306 inmates a month ago.
“It has been a roller coaster,” he said of the number of inmates at the jail.
Mellinger said county officials met with the National Institute of Corrections, which is conducting a study of the county’s criminal justice system.
“There was discussion about bail reform, which some of the courts have embraced,” he said. “The courts are now looking at a person’s criminal history to determine who is likely to appear in court on a lower bond or released on their own recognizance.”
Mellinger said the court system has sped up the process of getting cases completed in a more timely fashion.
“I don’t think in the past everyone was moving cases as quickly as possible,” he said.
Chief Judge Thomas Newman Jr., Madison Circuit Court Division 3, said earlier he proposed a local rule that would have allowed the criminal magistrates to handle the probation violation cases.
“Things started to get better,” he said Friday. “We didn’t have to implement the rule.”
Although the Madison County Commissioners sought funding to hire a case manager to review the pending charges of inmates in the jail, the Madison County Council denied the funding.
“The judges are the best case managers,” he said. “I was opposed to hiring a case manager.”
Newman said he utilizes a public defender to handle all Level 6 felony and probation violation cases in his court.
“It moves those cases,” he said. “There is no one in the jail for more than 10 days on a probation violation from my court.”
Madison County Prosecutor Rodney Cummings said Friday there was pressure put on the judges to move cases forward and release people from the jail.
“The reality is we only have so many beds in the jail,” he said. “We have to decide who to release.
“I am a little concerned,” Cummings continued. “We have to prioritize who remains incarcerated.”
He said reducing the number of inmates in the jail is driven by the judges and that the prosecutor’s office has the staff to move cases forward.
“We can’t send Level 6 offenders to prison because the state doesn’t allow it,” Cummings said. “So we have to incarcerate them locally, which is a cost to the county.”