New jail should open by end of the year By the end of the week, Rick Riley expects the keys to Crittenden County’s new detention center to become his, or at least under his control as the county’s jailer. Right now, construction workers are putting the final touches on the $7.7 million building.
Riley told county magistrates Monday that he hopes to transfer inmates from the current county jail to the new facility as early as the end of the month, with county control of the 130-bed center possibly coming this week.
“As fast as I can get the doors open, we’ll start housing inmates,” Riley told the fiscal court during a special meeting Monday to approve funds for bedding and phones at the detention center.
In fact, at a Wednesday afternoon meeting with construction officials, Riley anticipated to have an exact date as to when the county will take control of the building.
Before male and female prisoners are marched the short distance from the old 20-bed jail to the new one just behind it, new phones, furniture and other fixtures must be installed. Riley also wants to host an open house for the public before prisoners are loaded into the new cells. That, he said, could come next weekend if plans move ahead as expected.
“We’ll probably take over in a week or two at most,” Judge-executive Fred Brown told magistrates on Monday. “Probably within a week.”
To help bring the transition nearer completion, the fiscal court on Monday approved $8,500 from the county’s coal severance money to purchase mattresses, sheets and phones to outfit the new jail. The court also approved the purchase of a new 15-passenger van for the jailer to transport inmates. The vehicle will cost $28,792, and will be completely outfitted for moving inmates.
The new jail will saddle the county with about a $500,000 payment each year. The first year’s payment in June 2008 will be covered by interest earned on the sale of short-term construction bonds and from a $300,000 appropriation by the state.
Brown also hopes to retain the same amount in debt reduction from the state for the next payment in 2009. The funding request will be weighed early next year by the General Assembly when the state’s new biennial budget is put together. The remainder of the $500,000 payment in 2009 should be covered by revenues from housing neighboring counties’ inmates as well as state and possibly federal prisoners.
After that, Brown said, the jail should be self-sufficient.
The jail, however, will have to be close to capacity before it can be self-sustaining.
But, before the county can begin moving the jail toward capacity by housing state inmates, additional staff must be added. Riley currently employs 15 deputies, with plans to ultimately add 30 more. A 40-hour training session for new hires is set for the second week of January. Such training is required before the jail will qualify to house state prisoners.
"We've had a flood of applications," Riley said.
Once formally certified, the county should begin to make money off of the jail because each state inmate will earn the county $30.94 per day. Riley is also in negotiations with the U.S. Marshals Service to begin housing federal inmates, which pay upwards of $60 dollars per day.
Brown said if that happens, the jail would be one of only a handful in Kentucky west of Louisville qualified to house inmates convicted on federal charges.
“We won’t be housing any John Gotti’s,” the judge-executive said of safety concerns related to higher-level violators.
Once inmates are housed in the detention center, only authorized personnel are permitted in the jail. Even county grand jury inspections conducted for years at the old life safety jail will be halted, because the new facility will be a full-service lockup, housing state and federal prisoners in addition to county detainees. Any future inspections will be handled by state corrections officials.
In other action at Monday’s fiscal court meeting, magistrates also approved Van Hunt and Carolyn Belt as new Extension Service board members.