County officials support jail fee

Cities would pay $63.12 daily

FAYETTEVILLE — Washington County’s justices of the peace on Monday backed a proposal to charge cities a $63.12 daily fee for prisoners held in the Washington County Detention Center.

The proposal was approved Monday by the Jails/ Law Enforcement/Courts Committee and sent on to the full Quorum Court.

The daily fee will only apply to cities that don’t enter into a contract with Washington County for keeping city prisoners. Kelly Cantrell, public information officer for the Sheriff’s Office, said Fayetteville is the only city with a contract with the county. Fayetteville pays a one-time booking fee of $62 per prisoner. Other cities aren’t currently charged a fee.

Jak Kimball, technology director for the Sheriff’s Office, said the jail hasn’t historically tracked all of the information

needed to determine the cost to cities under the proposal. Kimball said, based on the information available, a $60 daily fee would bring in about $1.4 million. The cost to cities would range from a high end of about $737,000 for Fayetteville and $308,000 for Springdale down to a low end of about $11,000 for Goshen, $14,000 for Elm Springs and $19,000 for Lincoln.

“Those are just estimates,” Kimball said Monday.

Eva Madison, justice of the peace for District 9 in Fayetteville, questioned levying a fee on the cities when the jail is already supported by a county quarter percent sales tax. City residents pay that sales tax, as do rural residents, Madison said.

“In a way, I feel like we’re charging the cities twice,” Madison said.

Ann Harbison, justice of the peace for District 14 in southern Washington County, said the cost of operating the jail has been outstripping the county’s resource.

“We’ve been picking up the slack from the general fund to the tune of about $1 million a year for the past four or five years,” Harbison said. “We can no longer afford to do that.”

The proposal defines city prisoners as those “arrested by municipal law enforcement officers and delivered to the County Jail for incarceration, from the point of intake until (a) charging on a felony offense, (b) sentencing on a misdemeanor offense, and (c) release on a municipal ordinance violation.”

The initial draft of the ordinance called for a $76.57 daily fee. Sheriff Tim Helder said that estimate of the daily cost to house a prisoner at the jail was based on some incorrect information provided to the Association of Arkansas Counties when the group was doing an audit of jail costs for Arkansas counties. Helder said his staff reviewed the costs and said the $63.12 is based on the most current information available.

The ordinance would go into effect Jan. 1, if approved by the Quorum Court.

The committee also discussed the need for additional space at the jail and possible alternatives to incarceration that might avoid the need to add more jail beds. The jail has a design capacity of about 710 beds but with legal requirements to keep different categories of prisoners separated, the jail is full with about 650 prisoners. The Sheriff’s Office, working with circuit judges and Prosecutor Matt Durrett, has been releasing about 200 prisoners a month, according to Jay Cantrell, chief deputy, who told the justices of the peace during a recent inspection of the jail there were 92 prisoners sleeping on the floor.

Helder presented a jail expansion plan to the Quorum Court last year calling for adding about 600 beds for about $38 million. The justices of the peace have asked Helder to work on alternatives to the jail expansion, including hiring an ombudsman to try to identify more prisoners who could be released without bail or on low or reduced bail.

Helder told the justices of the peace Monday he recently visited Springfield, Mo., to see how the Greene County Sheriff’s Office is using modular jail space, custom built on truck trailers, as shortterm housing for prisoners. Helder said his staff has calculated adding 200 beds using some sort of modular housing would cost the county about $10.8 million initially or about $2.6 million a year when additional personnel, food for prisoners and other costs are considered.

“Nothing out there is free,” Helder said.

Helder said he supports looking at alternatives, but he remains convinced the jail will have to be expanded.

“I still maintain the expansion is going to be necessary in conjunction with these other projects,” Helder said. “That’s my opinion. It hasn’t changed. It’s going to have to happen.”

Willie Leming, justice of the peace for District 13 in southwestern Washington County, said the justices of the peace should know delaying the jail expansion project with a temporary fix such as the modular housing is going to cost the county more money.

“That $2.6 million a year, the longer we kick this down the road, that is money that is well-wasted,” Leming said.