The Benton County Sheriff’s Office is investigating how jail staff sent the wrong inmate to a Texarkana prison earlier this month, said spokeswoman Keshia Guyll.

Charles Scott, 44, was mistaken for Keith Scott, 28, another inmate housed in the same jail pod, and taken to Southwest Arkansas Community Correction Center in Texarkana on Jan. 2, Guyll said.

Officials at the center refused to take Charles Scott because he was the wrong inmate and because he was sentenced to the Arkansas Department of Correction and not Arkansas Community Correction, said Dina Tyler, spokeswoman for community correction, in an email.

The Texarkana center caught the mistake because sentencing paperwork sent to the center ahead of time didn't match paperwork jail employees brought.

Charles Scott, who was convicted on a felony drug charge, was returned to the Benton County Jail.

A messages left for the Southwest Arkansas Community Correction Center wasn't returned Tuesday.

John Tilley, who said he's a friend of Charles Scott, said Scott told him Benton County staff didn’t listen when he told jailers they had the wrong person.

“Someone’s not doing their job correctly,” Tilley said.

Scott’s trip was about 12 hours long, Guyll said. The incident is under investigation, but's likely the result of human error, Guyll said.

“We had two Scotts, and the wrong Scott came,” she said.

Keith Scott was taken to Northeast Arkansas Community Correction Center in Osceola the next day, Guyll said. Scott was taken with four other inmates to Osceola’s center because of limited space at the Texarkana facility, Tyler said.

“We schedule counties to transport offenders where we have space available,” Tyler said.

Allowing Benton County to bring Keith Scott along with other inmates to Osceola emptied the jail of Arkansas Community Correction inmates, Tyler said. Keith Scott, who was in jail on a parole violation on a conviction for breaking or entering, remained at the northeast center Tuesday, according to a website dedicated to searching for state inmates.

Charles Scott was at the Benton County Jail on Tuesday, according to the jail’s website.

The mistake is isolated, Guyll said. She didn't have an estimate for how much the mistake may have cost the county, but because the transports were already planned, any costs were minimal, she said. About four other inmates were taken with Charles Scott to Texarkana, Guyll said.

Jail officials will take steps to fix the problem once the investigation is finished, she said.

Accidentally transporting the wrong inmate is atypical among jails statewide, said Tyler and Danny Hickman, coordinator of the Arkansas Jails Standards Review Committee. Hickman said Benton County’s incident is likely an honest mistake. Benton County and Washington County officials couldn't remember a similar mistake in the past 15 years, they said.

“This is the first I’ve ever heard of something like this happening,” Guyll said.

Hickman said some of Arkansas’s larger jails are moving toward systems that use bracelets with bar codes and scanning technology to track inmates. Benton County relies on fingerprint scanning, Guyll said, because that’s what the jail administration prefers.

Washington County uses its own version of the bar-code scanning system, said Maj. Randall Denzer, jail administrator. The system, which started around 2005 in Washington County, helps track hundreds of inmates at the Washington County Detention Center as they go to doctor appointments, get transferred to other detention facilities or go to court hearings, Denzer said.

Inmates are scanned multiple times a day and must be scanned when they are released, he said.

“The way our system is set up, it would be really hard to take someone where they aren’t supposed to be,” Denzer said.

The mistake in Benton County isn't related to crowding issues, but the Sheriff’s Office doesn't yet know where the break down occurred, Guyll said. The name on a list given to Benton County Jail staff, who prepare inmates for transport, listed the correct name, she said.

No one has been reprimanded yet, she said. The investigation will determine whether the transfer was a problem with process or personnel, Guyll said. If the incident is a personnel problem, staff may be disciplined or receive remedial training.

The investigation could be completed by the end of this week, Guyll said. She said the Sheriff’s Office wouldn't have any further comment about the incident until the investigation is completed.