Local Jails Turn Empty Cells Into Profit

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Prison officials around the nation who desperately need to reduce their overcrowded inmate populations are increasingly looking to send prisoners to local jails with cells to rent.

In some cases, lockups with space to spare have paid for more than half their budgets with the renting scheme. But in at least one jail, the arrangement backfired when inmates, angry about a move across the country, vandalized the cells.

Still, the complaint from many jailers is not new inmates, but the number of telephone calls from prospective renters.

“I turn people down almost every day,” said Lt. James Ross, who runs the Allegan County Jail in southwest Michigan. About half of the jail’s 174 beds are often rented to out-of-county convicts.

About 27,000 prisoners, or 10% of the inmates in the nation’s largest jails, are being held for other agencies, said Lawrence Greenfeld, director of corrections statistics for the U.S. Department of Justice. Most of the displaced inmates come from state prison systems, which pay a per diem to the county jail, Greenfeld said.

Jails with space often have contracts with the state and federal governments to hold inmates from overcrowded lockups.

One of the pressures to alleviate overcrowding comes from federal or local court capacity restrictions. In Michigan, for instance, a state law requires early release for inmates if a county jail is above capacity for 21 consecutive days.

“Sheriffs throughout the state have recognized there is money to be made and are becoming conscious that they can make a profit by renting out,” said Dale Davis, executive director of the Michigan Sheriff’s Assn.

In Clare County, Mich., other jurisdictions are charged $40 per day to house an inmate at the jail, said Sheriff Howard Haskin. He said about $25 or $30 of that is profit.

“The lights and heat are on anyway, so all we’re really paying for is three meals a day,” he said.

Allegan County expects to take in about $1.35 million in 1989 by leasing jail space to other counties. That will pay for about 70% of the jail’s anticipated budget expenditures for the year.

In Illinois, about a third of the Peoria County Jail’s 220 inmates are from other Illinois counties and federal agencies.

Charging $50 per day per inmate, the jail took in $718,000 last year in rent, or about half of the sheriff’s department’s annual revenue, said budget coordinator Carol Van Winkle.

Until recently, the practice of transferring inmates from one county to another had been common in California.

“That stopped when everyone became overcrowded,” said Richard Rainey, vice president of the California Sheriff’s Assn.

Rainey said the severity of overcrowding has led to jail expansion and has forced counties to look closely at alternatives such as community service, parole and home-monitoring programs.

But there are drawbacks to boarding inmates hundreds of miles from their homes and families.

“If you place a pretrial person in a jail 200 or 300 miles away from home and from his attorney, he’s buried in terms of his legal defense,” said Ed Koren, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union National Prisons Project.

The loss of contact with family and friends also makes adjustment more difficult when the inmate is released, Koren said.

And occasionally, a sheriff’s dream about raising revenue in a jail with empty cells can turn into a nightmare.

In December, the 509-bed Spokane County Jail in Washington signed a $1.1-million contract with the District of Columbia’s Department of Corrections to accept 50 of the city’s inmates.

Since then, the inmates have set mattresses on fire and stuffed up toilets to protest their 2,600-mile transfer.