Benton County sheriff details jail’s medical contract increase

BENTONVILLE — Nearfull prisoner counts drove up the cost of the Benton County Jail’s yearly medical contract — just before the covid-19 pandemic drove the number of prisoners down, Sheriff Shawn Holloway told the Quorum Court on Tuesday.

The sheriff praised the contractor, Turn Key Health of Oklahoma City, for sticking with a contract based on a jail population of 500 for the past two year despite a higher average prisoner count for the last year and a half.

The jail had peaks of up to 720 prisoners sometimes and often exceeded 600, Holloway told the justices of the peace while they met as a committee of the whole in the Benton County Courthouse. The meeting began at 6 p.m., hearing reports on a variety of county services including the environmental department and the communications department.

“This year, they told us they couldn’t do that any more,” Holloway said. This year’s contract is for $1,051,000, up from $978,000 from the previous year, which pays for another nurse for the jail.

Then covid struck, leading to reducing the number of nonviolent offenders kept at the jail to reduce the spread of the disease. The jail’s prisoner count fell as low as 350, Holloway said. The prisoners remaining had fewer procedures done because, for instance, dentists were taking no patients for nonemergency purposes during the pandemic’s height.

“We asked if we could get back on the new contract and were reminded we got a ride on this for the past couple of years,” Holloway said.

In addition, the prisoner population is creeping back up, he told the committee. The number of days state prisoners are kept at county jails usually average about the mid-40s, he said. Now they are in the high 90s because the state isn’t taking prisoners in as readily because of covid outbreaks in state prisons.

Meanwhile the state is releasing more inmates already in prison on parole to reduce their exposure to the disease.

“Lock all your stuff up,” the sheriff warned.