Cost of corrections
And while the story of the jail's first year of operation is not about Rick Riley, Judge-Executive Fred Brown says neither he nor the fiscal court would have even considered replacing the old 20-bed jail without someone like Riley at the helm.
With few words to write of the detention center's failures since opening in early 2008, the tale of the new jail is written mostly in numbers. Whether in cost to county taxpayers (virtually zero to date), the number of inmates (an average of more than 100), the number of new jobs created (nearly three dozen) or the cost-savings incurred to city and county government through the use of inmate labor (about $10,000 weekly), it's the digits that most people look at when measuring the jail's success.
Before building the new detention center, Crittenden County was taking more than $300,000 each year from its road and general funds and pouring it into the county's jail budget. Since the new facility has opened, not a dime of general or road fund money has been transferred to pay for operating costs, according to County Treasurer Sue Padget.
That may not hold until the end of the jail's budget cycle on June 30, Padget admits, but she doesn't anticipate having to use any more than $100,000 to $150,000 from county coffers to help make ends meet at the detention center this fiscal year.
"The money we get for housing state inmates seems to come in at the right time. That's been saving us," she said.
In other words, the new jail is paying its own way, and magistrates are pleased by those numbers.
"The way I look at it, anything less than $300,000 from the county is good news," said Magistrate Dan Wood. "That's what we were putting into the old jail and the state was going to make us close it.
"So far, so good," Wood said about the new detention center.
Magistrate Greg West agrees.
"We were putting all of our yearly truck license tax money, about $225,000, into the old jail, and probably $80,000 a year from general fund," West said. "If we're not putting anything into the new one, at least we are breaking even. I know things can change, but it appears that is the way it's working right now."
West, like other magistrates, said that putting more than $7 million into the new jail was a unnerving, yet necessary investment.
"Anytime you're dealing with that much money, it's scary," he explained. "But we had to do something."
Construction of the detention center will cost Crittenden County more than a half-million dollars annually until the bonds are paid off in 2037.
Magistrates also insist that inmate labor has had a major impact. When you look at mowing expenses that are saved in the summer and debris cleanup expenses from the recent ice storm, West says the cost-savings are incredible.
"We've cut costs at the road department, too, thanks to inmate labor," West added.
There is one caveat to the jail's annual operating receipts, however. In the first year, $250,000 was diverted to the detention center from coal tax money, and for the coming fiscal year, there has been $350,000 penciled in from a one-time payment by the City of Marion.
Coal severance taxes will be available for three or four more budget cycles, but eventually those types of resources could dry up. Then, the detention center will be operating without a safety net.
"Hopefully by then it will be able to operate solely on its own," Wood said.
The Crittenden County Fiscal Court will meet in special session later this month to approve the jail's operating budget for 2009-10.
Judge Brown, who has no plans of seeking re-election, calls the move to build the new jail an elementary one, considering the fiscal court was facing a mandate from Frankfort to close its old life-safety jail.
It was with either build a new lockup, a cost for which the court could control, Brown said, or begin transporting prisoners to nearby jails, a budgetary wild-card dependent upon fuel costs, salaries, varying per diem charges from counties for housing inmates and, of course, the number of offenders needed to be kept from the public. He estimates that at today's figures, the latter decision could have cost the county as much as $300,000 annually, with that number sure to climb each year.
"That $525,000 goes on for a long time," Brown said of annual debt payment on the new jail, "but to me, it's still a no-brainer. Choosing to build a new detention center was, and still is, the right decision."
The judge-executive points to an average savings to taxpayers roughly equivalent to the annual payment from the use of inmate labor for ongoing municipal jobs like mowing and custodial work to projects like the Blackford Walking Trail facility that may have never come to fruition without the free workforce.
Since last May when the jail began tracking the number of inmates housed and labor used in a report published in The Crittenden Press each week, the estimated cost of labor savings based on a $6.55 hourly wage is roughly $10,000 weekly. In the course of a year, Brown points out, the savings and jail debt balance out.
"The realization of what this inmate labor is worth has been a bonus," Brown said.
Inmate labor used as in-kind money for grants or to supplement City of Marion or county labor has helped each government complete projects they may not have otherwise finished. Brown claims it has also hastened recovery from the ice storm that plagued the start of Riley's second year at the new jail as well as damages from disasters in 2008 that included an ice storm, a severe flood and remnants of Hurricane Ike.
"It really shows up when you have a disaster like we just went through," Riley said.
The work-release program has also helped clean the county while earning a few extra dollars and strides toward a state-mandated waste-reduction goal.
In late 2008, the detention center took over operation from Freedom Waste of the county's solid waste convenience center, assuring that the county would meet waste reduction goals from Frankfort by sorting and recycling trash dumped at the site. The items recycled by the county earn the fiscal court money, too, contributing to a savings of $100 per mile formerly paid to contractors for cleanup of roadside debris.
As of February, 1,199 bags of trash had been collected by inmates from along 1,690.5 miles of road, saving $169,050 that would have been paid to keep right-of-ways free of unsightly trash.
"It makes our community more attractive and safer not only to our residents, but also to visitors and tourists," Brown said.
Riley said in the future he would like to add to the jail's capacity and available labor force by revamping the old history museum adjacent to the detention center into a work-release housing facility for low-risk inmates.
"But that's something that's going to take money or we can't financially get into it," he said.

Banking on next year
Despite the benefits of inmate labor and all of the jobs the detention center has created, it's still a very expensive proposition. Daily operating expenses due to the rising cost of food, fuel and supplies are projected to increase in the second year of the jail's operation. Salaries have also been costlier than originally projected. Payroll has turned out to be more than $710,000 annually, $330,000 greater than early forecasts. The jail currently employs 42 workers.
"The price of everything has gone up," Brown said.
Much of the increase, Riley said, is because of a quicker-than-expected growth in inmate population, which brings with it a need for more groceries, energy usage, supplies and deputies.
"We didn't anticipate filling up as quickly as we did," the jailer said.
The new detention center's prisoner count rose quickly from the dozen county inmates moved over in the initial transfer to more than 100 shortly after gaining approval for housing state and federal inmates. The population soon ran close to capacity, hastening a push for a full staff of about three-dozen deputies readied through the jail's 40-hour training program administered on-site.
Last year, however, Gov. Steve Beshear's early-release plan for non-violent offenders in order to cut down on Kentucky's burgeoning prison population cut into local jail revenues. During the initial stages of the program, the local jail's population fell from near capacity to about 75 percent, Brown said.
On average, state inmates have accounted for about 85 percent of the local detention center's population. They are the bread and butter for the jail, Brown said, each bringing in $32 per day from the state for custody services provided. The balance are inmates charged from within Crittenden County or those sent here from neighboring counties. Local inmates, of course, generate no revenue while inmates from other counties bring in $25 per day.
On June 29, 2008, after Beshear implemented the early release effort, the number of prisoners held locally dipped to 89, the lowest total since breaching the 100 mark early last year. Beds began to once again fill, though, as summer moved on. In August, 120 inmates called Crittenden County Detention Center home, the highest total since the early release program started. Numbers stayed above 100 – again, with offenders from Crittenden or other nearby counties accounting for little more than 10 percent – until eventually dropping to 76 at the first of 2009.
But the numbers have again reached near capacity. In fact, the latest report showed 114 inmates at the jail, 94 of which are state-funded.
“We have had a full house for the last few weeks,” Shea Holliman, Class D Coordinator at the facility, said Tuesday. “As of right now, we have every bed in general population in use. We are using isolation rooms for housing county inmates that come in because we have no beds currently open. We also have inmates in isolation that are there for medical, disciplinary and overflow.”
Holliman prepares the weekly inmate and labor reports and coordinates the work-release schedule with inmates and supervisors. She recalls some high-profile inmates held at the jail have included Tamara Caldwell and Quincy Cross, both accused as accomplices in the murder of a Mayfield woman and desecration of her body in 2000. Wesley Dockery, an attempted robbery suspect shot by a Kentucky State Trooper in an armed stand-off last May at a Marion motel, was also held at the detention center.
Federal inmates, of which no more than one at a time has been held at the detention center, bring in considerably more revenue than state prisoners, but Riley said that price varies according to a prisoner's circumstances. Garnering more federally-sentenced offenders would help offset any reduction in state offenders and would solidify the revenue side of the budget, but officials are left with little more than wishful thinking at this point.
"We keep hoping for more," Brown said.

Staffing the jail
County leaders are banking on the need to keep the jail fully-staffed at about 40 employees for the fiscal year that starts July 1. More than $710,000 has been budgeted for payroll, plus Riley's salary of $31,580. Another $170,000 is set aside for other costs related to personnel such as deputy uniforms, retirement and payroll deductions.
That's nearly half of the upcoming jail budget of $1.9 million for staffing.
Riley also receives an additional $31,900 in pay for serving as county building superintendent. The title and pay were added last year to supplement the income of the jailer, whose salary for his four-year term was state-mandated based on the status of the county's corrections system as minimum-security at the time of the 2006 election.
The positions at the detention center have helped stave off unemployment numbers that have reached double-digits in some neighboring counties. Riley says the majority of his workers are from Crittenden County.
Starting pay for a deputy is $7.69 per hour, equating to a full-time salary below the 2008 federal poverty level of $17,600 for a family of three. Full-time benefits, though they include a piece of the state's retirement system for municipal employees, do not include health insurance. Crittenden County is one of only two in the state to not provide healthcare insurance coverage for its employees.
Early employee turnover at the detention center has leveled off, Brown said. And while the pay is not very high, the jobs are helping families stay in Crittenden County and keep groceries on the table, he added.
Brown estimates that $800,000 in payroll for the jail would turn over five times in the county, creating a $4 million impact on the local economy.
And, the additional jobs have also helped the City of Marion, increasing its payroll tax revenues by about five percent over the previous year, according to City Administrator Mark Bryant.
"I can't think of any other jobs that have been added inside the city," Bryant said.

A better way
Finally, local officials believe the public perception of the county jail has improved over the past few years, since Riley has been at the helm.
"I've not heard any negative," Judge Brown said. "Certainly, if there was, I would have heard it."
With Riley's no-nonsense approach and a building equipped to meet the needs of corrections in the 21st century, the jail has become a model for other counties looking to build new detention centers.
Last year, officials in Barren County, Ky., began looking at Crittenden County Detention Center as a model for their own new correctional facility. Riley said they made at least three visits to Marion, looking over the ins and outs of the jail designed to meet the needs of Crittenden County.
"They are in love with our jail," Holliman said.
And why not? The jail sports the latest technology with 96 cameras surveilling every nook and cranny inside and outside of the jail; a high-tech, on-site training room for new employees; a secured sallyport for prisoner pick-up and drop-off that prevents risk of escape; remote video capabilities for parole hearings and arraignment that eliminate a need for costly transporting; and security that after 14 months has led to zero escapes either from within the jail or out on work detail.
In the 10 years prior to Riley's tenure, two elected jailers left office early – Jerry Gilland in 2003 after a drug-trading charge and Gene Summers in 1999 after one of his deputies allowed booze, guns and women into a men-only jail. The latter incident became national news. Years earlier, Crittenden County Jail graced the pages of the July 1992 issue of Playboy in a humorous article, "Your Guide to America's Top 10 Jails."
Black marks against the current facility or happenings within have been few. Prior to opening, nearby residents were concerned over safety and disturbance to daily life, but Riley and Holliman said those concerns appear to have waned.
"I think they have to agree with us that we're trying to be good neighbors," Holliman said.
Virginia Hunt is 86 years old and lives directly across West Carlisle Street from the front of the jail. She's lived there five years and said she "griped and griped" when the detention center was being built.
"It was dusty and those trucks and equipment were in and out all of the time. I was very unhappy," she said. "Now that's built I just think it's so nice. It's a credit to Crittenden County."
Hunt never dreamed the jail would be such a modern facility. She says the people who work there and inmates who sometimes groom the exterior grounds are pleasant and polite.
"There's no racket or noise at all. I was very unhappy at first, but now I am glad that it's here."
Regina Merrick, who is librarian at the Crittenden County Public Library next door to the detention center, agrees with Hunt's observations. The more than one-year construction period left the neighborhood weary. Now, though, she says the jail is a good neighbor.
"Honestly, we hardly know they are over there unless we call them to help us move something," Merrick said. Security has never been a concern, she added.
Instances of misbehavior, such as work-release prisoners trying to sneak in contraband or a recent case of an inmate making homemade hooch from fruit cocktail, are dealt with swiftly. All inmates who leave the jail for labor assignments are strip-searched, and fruit is no longer on the menu.
"There's nothing that's happened over there that the staff hasn't handled," Brown added.
Perhaps the biggest indicator of the change in attitude toward corrections in Crittenden County comes from the inmates themselves. Those who are allowed to participate in work release often point to 23 hours of lock-down and surveillance as the motivator for contributing to local projects.
"It's a privilege," Holliman said. "They really take that to heart."
Inmates earn a day off their sentence for every 40 hours worked. They also earn 63 cents a day that can be spent at the jail's commissary.
Inside, prisoners are allowed only an hour of recreation or other supervised activity outside of their cells. Smoking is not allowed, not even in the outdoor recreation area. And lights-out and morning wake-up are strictly adhered to.
Outside, said Holliman, many inmates have been surprised at their treatment by supervisors and local residents.
"You can tell some don't know how nice some people can be," she said.
Holliman believes it is the responsibility of the staff at the correctional facility to make the jail just that – an opportunity to correct behavior that has led some people to end up on the wrong side of the law. For deputies, it's a matter of respect, she said.
"They get treated well; like we want to be treated."
GED classes, rehab and recovery courses and the work-release program are all used to give inmates tools for change. Through the labor opportunities, some inmates have developed new skills that might help them get jobs upon release, Holliman said.
"We want to give our inmates a new lease on life if they want."

Flap over grad caps leads to compromise
Based on a concession made by the Crittenden County High School Site-Based, Decision-Making Council, seniors graduating May 29 will be able to have their caps and paint them, too.
The issue has raged for a few months over whether seniors should be allowed to decorate the formal square academic caps they buy and wear for graduation ceremonies. The cap is known as a mortarboard.
The school, which had turned a blind eye to the de facto tradition for the past 18 years, decided to put a stop to it starting this May. Then, came the outcry.
A small group of students and parents were outraged and voiced their dissatisfaction at a couple of site-based council meetings and one wrote a letter to the newspaper recently, critical of the school's decision. About eight parents and four students attended Monday's school council meeting and again urged the governing body to change its policy about painting caps, although the student handbook clearly prohibits the practice.
After more than 30 minutes of debate on the subject, the council approved a one-time waiver that will allow students to buy two caps, decorate one and leave one plain for the formal graduation ceremony.
Crittenden County High School Principal Todd Merrick said the school council decided last summer to prohibit seniors from wearing decorated mortarboards during graduation. He said that the decision was based on decorum and uniformity. Merrick said he agreed with the prohibition although the first-year principal had not been hired when that particular policy was established.
In order to placate parents and students supporting decorated caps, the school council decided Monday to give this year's Class of 2009 an option. They will be able to purchase an extra mortarboard and decorate it. They will be able to bring into the ceremony the fancied up caps, but cannot wear them until after coronation of graduates, when tassels are moved from one side of the mortarboard to the other.
Merrick said seniors will not be allowed to wear the decorated version when they march in nor when they walk through the line to receive their diploma. The more traditional, plain blue mortarboard will be required for the formal part of the ceremony. Afterwards, for photographs and fellowship they can wear the decorated version.
Mortarboards cost about $10 each.
Merrick stressed that this concession will not be made for future classes.

City bracing for tougher times ahead
Like most public entities, the City of Marion is bracing for tougher financial times over the coming year.
City Administrator Mark Bryant told the Marion City Council at its regular meeting Monday to be ready for the stark reality of a struggling economy.
"We're going to have to tighten our belts next fiscal year," Bryant told Mayor Mickey Alexander and six council members. "Although our income is steady, our expenses are going up, up."
In addition, Bryant said the current budget, which expires June 30, needs some tinkering before it's a truly accurate document. Because of unanticipated expenses related TO the winter ice storm, Bryant said some amendments will be necessary to get this year's budget back in order.
The council generally starts working on its new budget early each spring. It wants to have it ready by May.
Although revenue from city services and taxes is generally flat, Bryant said investment revenue is down $20,000 from the previous year. Fortunately, that drop was predicted and had already been figured into the current spending plan, Bryant said.
Additionally, the council took on some new expenses this year when it bought property behind East Gum Street for $47,000 in order to mitigate a standing water and drainage issue, spent $7,000 to buy the Marion Bobcats Baseball trademark, gave $12,000 to the Crittenden County Coalition for a Drug-Free Community and pitched in another $7,000 for dirt work on soccer fields at the Marion-Crittenden County Park, just to name a few.
Other expenses are looming, too. Bryant said the sewer extension project around Hart and Rudd streets, the widening of Fords Ferry Road and the construction of sidewalks near the high school on West Elm Street are all grant-funded jobs, but will require manpower and some additional spending from city funds.
"We have a lot of grant projects ongoing and the way those are set up, we have to front the money and wait for reimbursement," Bryant explained. "That can sometimes put you in a crunch."
Also, during the next fiscal year, the city will have to pay $350,000 to the county for its share of drinking water projects.
With ice storm cleanup crews expected to be on the job for weeks more, Bryant says making all of the budgetary pieces fit together this spring will be a challenge.
"What bothers me looking at the budget for next year is all of the unknowns," Bryant said. "It's hard to tell what all we will have to spend (on storm cleanup) and what will be reimbursable."
Marion has projected spending about $150,000 for storm cleanup. FEMA and the State of Kentucky should reimburse 87 percent of that, but checks are slow to arrive, officials say.
The city has long been the among the most financially sound entities in the community, and while no one is ready to jump out of a window, there are still some reasons for concern. Like Braynt said, get ready for some belt tightening.
In other business, the council discussed several drainage issues affecting residents and motorists. Among the most troubling is the nearly continuous sheet of water that runs across North Main Street from West Mound Park. The water, which turns to ice in cold weather, has been the cause of a few accidents.
City Public Works Director Brian Thomas said the source of the water is a wet weather spring. The council discussed several options for re-routing the water, but all were costly.
City Councilman Darrin Tabor suggested putting money into next year's budget to solve the problem.

No 'disaster days' for Crittenden school calendar
Graduation for high school seniors in Crittenden County will remain May 29 despite legislation in Frankfort that is the governor’s signature away from allowing school districts to waive as many as 10 days missed due to weather. Educators are also awaiting the governor’s approval on a measure to put an end to the current student assessment test.
On Monday, Dr. Rachel Yarbrough, superintendent of Crittenden County schools, said the district will not be eligible for the “disaster days” spelled out in Rep. Mike Cherry’s House Bill 322, which gained final approval Friday in the legislature. Therefore, the adjusted academic calendar approved last month by the board of education to account for the 13 days missed in Crittenden County will remain. The last day for students will be May 28.
The superintendent explained that since the updated academic calendar had already been approved and that the original calendar included provisions for as many as 12 make-up days, Crittenden County was not entitled to the waiver.
One condition of Cherry’s bill is that school districts must first use all built-in make-up days before being eligible for any of the 10 disaster days spelled out by the law. Yarbrough said the number of make-up days built in to the district’s calendar at the start of each year is based upon the highest number of days missed in the last five academic years.
“The revision we just had just followed through on placing some of those make-up days back into the calendar,” Yarbrough said of last month’s action.
In Livingston County, the board of education is still grappling with a decision on utilizing the disaster days to finalize a school calendar.
“The board of education plans to meet in the near future to discuss changes to the school calendar and set the graduation date for the Class of 2009,” Jennifer MarshalL, public information officer for the school district, said Tuesday
Under the measure, districts could seek permission to avoid making up as many as two weeks of instruction due to the ice storm that caused widespread power outages in late January and February.
The law sets a May 1 deadline for districts to request disaster days that would not be made up. State education officials could deny such requests. Districts seeking disaster days would have to show they will use all their allotted makeup days.
Meantime, the year-end testing period for students in Crittenden County could be adjusted due to another piece of legislation approved Friday by lawmakers.
Yarbrough said the May 4-15 window for this year’s Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS) exams might be changed as details of Senate Bill 1 become clearer to educators across the state. The legislation, sponsored by Crittenden County native Sen. Ken Winters (R-Murray), phases out CATS and calls for a new permanent exam by the 2011-12 academic year.
Under the final version, students will take the current test this spring in math, science, reading and social studies. Districts have the option to test in arts and humanities and in practical living and career studies. Writing portfolios will not be scored as part of the accountability review, but will be used for instructional purposes.
On Monday afternoon, Yarbrough said it was too early to comprehend all of the outlined changes for the current academic year, including a testing timeline. First official word on the legislation from Kentucky Department of Education was not sent to educators until earlier that day, leaving details sketchy at press time Tuesday.
“We are looking at new timelines... depending on new legislative updates,” the superintendent said of KDE’s distribution of information.
By the board’s meeting next week, however, she said enough should be known to present the five-member panel with any changes needed to the testing schedule.
Despite any uncertainty to details, CATS is dead.
The final version of Winter’s call to end the decade-old testing system passed both the House and Senate unanimously, and the governor has pledged to sign off on the measure.
“We have established a new day in the education of our young people,” said Winters, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.
His counterparts on the other side of the aisle agreed.
“For all the strides we have made in the last 20 years, we have lost our focus on individual student achievement,” Democratic Sen. Dorsey Ridley of Henderson said. “...Tests that have focused on dead painters and musicians will be a thing of the past, with classroom emphasis on students creating art and music, to truly appreciate its virtues.”
Rep. Cherry said one of the major goals of the legislation is to reduce the amount of time schools spend on testing and teaching the test.
“We agreed to do away with the cumbersome CATS test and agreed on a way to assess schools over the next two years while a new state test is being devised,” he added
Lawmakers have also promised that parents would be able to closely track their children's academic progress under the new system.
“The tests that students do take, meanwhile, will be wrapped up in five days rather than the current 10,” Ridley added.
In spring 2010, schools will use the current test in math, science, reading and social studies. Also, a standardized test will let parents and teachers measure student performance and gauge how Kentucky fares with other states.
The next spring, schools will keep using the current test in science, reading and social studies as well as the standardized test. Students will take a math exam based on new standards developed by state education officials with input from teachers.
All new parts of the test will go into effect in the spring of 2012 along with the new school accountability system.
Another key provision directs public universities and the state Department of Education to align core content standards for entry-level college courses with high school standards.
The goal is to ensure students are prepared for college.
The school accountability system was a key facet of the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act. Its last revision came a decade ago in 1998.
Under the current system, students are slotted into four performance levels based on their test scores – novice, apprentice, proficient and distinguished. Opponents have said that CATS led teachers and schools to devote too much classroom time to pupils' test preparation.