BENTONVILLE -- Benton County officials plan a county jail expansion to ease overcrowding and a lack of space for misdemeanor offenders. The problems, though, aren't new and no permanent solution is in sight.
County Judge Bob Clinard and top administrators from the Sheriff's Office presented a two-part plan for jail expansion to the Finance Committee on Thursday.
What’s next
Benton County’s Public Safety Committee will discuss the proposed expansion of the County Jail when the panel meets at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Quorum Courtroom in the County Administration Building, 215 E. Central Ave. in Bentonville.
Source: Staff Report
A short-term measure would convert existing jail space to house misdemeanor offenders and relocate administrative offices, training facilities, laundry space and other non-jail functions to a proposed non-jail addition, Clinard said. That quick fix would cost the county about $30,000 and give space to hold about 30 prisoners.
A larger plan would add another 60 spaces for misdemeanor offenders and add 12 cells for women inmates to the county's existing jail space, Clinard said. The cost of the two projects likely will be about $1.8 million to $1.9 million. Clinard will have an architect draft a conceptual plan to add another jail pod to boost the county jail's capacity by 150 to 200 inmates while the work on the women's cells is being done if the plan is approved.
The lack of space for misdemeanor offenders recently was highlighted when Paul Bridges and Ray Bunch, two of the county's district court judges, told justices of the peace they are hampered in the administration of their courts because defendants are aware they won't be jailed. Defendants sentenced to time in jail are cited out and sometimes released while the offices bringing them to jail still are doing paperwork, Bridges and Bunch said.
Doug Schrantz served as Rogers municipal court judge and later as Rogers district judge from 1993 until he was elected to a circuit court position in 20o9. Throughout most of those years he faced situations similar to what Bunch and Bridges described, Schrantz said.
"From 1993 up until the new jail was built there was no space for misdemeanors," Schrantz said. "We used alternatives, typically public service work. That worked in some cases. In the truly hard cases, it was not effective."
When the county opened its new jail in 1999 the situation eased for a time but he could see it growing worse within a few years, Schrantz said.
"There was a brief window of opportunity there when we had access," he said. "They were already having problems housing women in the latter part of that time."
A temporary jail barracks was built just south of the old county jail in 1993 while the new jail was being built. County Clerk's records show the Quorum Court appropriated $197,770 for the barracks in August 1993. Bruce Rutherford was county judge at the time. The barracks never was meant to be more than a temporary solution, he said.
"The old county jail was still in use and it had a capacity of 70 or 80 and was always at maximum capacity," Rutherford said. "We built the barracks for nonviolent offenders and work-release inmates. It was just a temporary building we put up to alleviate the overcrowding. The cost was minimal, and after it was all over we disassembled it and put it back together at the Road Department."
Capt. Jeremy Guyll oversees the operation of the County Jail for the Sheriff's Office. The jail has designed space for 589 inmates, but meeting federal and state laws and requirements mean the jail will be "full" with fewer inmates, Guyll said.
"We can hold 589 as our max capacity, but realistically we're full at about 543 inmates," Guyll said.
Legal requirements to keep different categories of inmates separated means there always will be some empty spaces. The jail has to keep separate space for misdemeanor offenders; pre-trial felons and post-trial felons; sex offenders; women inmates; work detail inmates and jail trustys, Guyll said. The jail also has to have space available for inmates who are assigned to protective custody for their own safety and those who are assigned to administrative segregation space or held separately for disciplinary problems.
"We have to protect these people while they're in our custody," he said.
The opening of the space in the existing jail for misdemeanor offender means the county has to build space for training facilities that take up the bulk of the space being vacated. Jail staff logged 15,860 training hours in 2014 and the field division put in another 21,490 hours of training. The training is required by law, Guyll said, and some of it has to be done before an employee is allowed to go to work.
"Every person here has to go through 40 hours of jail standards class to be a jailer," he said. "These are all things we do in-house. There's also mandatory training. Every employee has to have eight hours sexual harassment training, eight hours of racial profiling training. Continuing education for deputies is 16 hours."
"That's 37,350 training hours in a year," Guyll said. "That's a lot of training. You have a facility to do it. We're mandated by jail standards to do it."
The immediate conversion of space for misdemeanor offenders will be done with money already in the 2015 budget. The larger parts of the project will require additional money.
Joel Jones, justice of the peace for District 7 and chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said the proposed jail expansion will be discussed by the committee. Jones sees the need for additional space but he wants to be certain measures being considered by the state to reduce the backlog of inmates sentenced to prison but still being held in county jails won't render the problem moot. The county has held as many as 263 prisoners awaiting transfer to state prisons, Guyll said.
"My only concern is if the state does something dramatic with state prisoners will we still need the space," Jones said. "Otherwise, I think it's a valid project to to the short-term expansion while we're talking about the bigger project."
The county jail population will continue to grow, and the number of inmates who require special consideration -- like sex offenders -- will grow with it regardless of how many inmates are awaiting transfer to the state prison system, Guyll said.
"One of our real issues is right now we have 112 sex offenders in this facility," he said. "I know everybody is concerned with the number of state inmates. But they've been in the process of doing something for two or three years now. We've got 112 sex offenders in this jail right now and most of them are not yet sentenced. It takes so long for a sex offender case to go through the court system they're incarcerated in the county jail for a long time."
NW News on 04/05/2015