State is paying $5 million to house inmates in county jails

The initiative, intended by Corrections Director Mike Kenney as a short-term solution to crowding issues, comes with a yearly pricetag of nearly $5.2 million for 150 inmates.

Add another $1.7 million in per diem costs and operating expenses next year if state lawmakers approve the department's funding request seeking to expand the program by 50 prisoners.

But is it working?

By September, capacity at the state's prisons was at 157.3 percent, down less than 1 percent from May.

If the relocated inmates had been inside state prisons, overall capacity would have been up 2.7 percent.

"The goal is to have a working partnership with counties resulting in a short-term solution to capacity," Foster said.

He called it a measured, systematic approach.

State lawmakers always knew the stopgap measure likely wouldn't get the prison under 140 percent capacity, but they knew they had to do something.

Hitting 140 percent can trigger the governor to declare an emergency and often is considered a benchmark for federal judges to order construction of new cells, a move that would cost far more than $5 million a year.

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In February, when Kenney went to the Legislature's Appropriations Committee asking for money for the county jail program and other fixes after prison capacity approached the 155 percent mark, Sen. Danielle Conrad called it a Band-Aid approach to the prison's problems.

Kenney responded by saying the deficit request was intended "to sustain us safely and (address) public safety ... until we can have a more succinct formatted plan in front of us."

Before that, the prison had pursued mostly no-cost options.

In April, lawmakers passed LB907 with an emergency clause, giving the OK for the Corrections Department to outsource 150 inmates at a per-diem cost adding up to $4,226,625 a year.

Foster said the prison believes now that the annual cost will be $4,580,750.

Then there's another $592,351 in operating expenses, which includes salaries and benefits for staff managing the program.

And the prison pays inmates at county jails $3.78 a day.

All state prisoners, even death row inmates who are kept separated from other inmates by court order and often can't work, get $1.21 to $3.78 a day for jobs that range from mopping floors to making license plates and Braille books for children.

The inmates moved to county jails don't have the opportunity to work prison jobs, but they get the pay anyway. It's called lay-in pay, Foster said.

The prison pays them the higher rate of $3.78 a day because there is a justifiable reason they aren't working, he said.

And, they get more because the department takes into account they have to buy things like soap and razors from the jail's canteen, rather than no-name basics they could get for free at the prison, Foster said.

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Nebraska prisons, which on May 31 operated at 158 percent of design capacity, eked down to 157 percent by Sept. 30.

By then, the outsourcing program was in full swing with 163 inmates in county jails in Hall, Platte, Phelps and Dawson counties and three more counties interested in getting paid to take prisoners off the state's hands.

It's a lucrative opportunity for jailers with space to spare. The state pays county jails $75 to $88 per inmate per day.

"We just make the money," said Fred Ruiz, corrections director in Hall County, which charges the $88 rate.

The money goes into the county's general fund, so ultimately, taxpayers benefit.

Ruiz said the Hall County Board of Supervisors planned for the future when they used a $22 million bond issue to build the 323-bed jail in Grand Island, which opened in 2008.

Normally, they average 150 to 170 county inmates awaiting trials or serving jail sentences of a year or less.

Last Monday's count was 255. Close to half were state prison inmates.

Ruiz said the county originally was going to take 80 state inmates, but a federal contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house immigration detainees has dwindled from 70 to 90 a day to nearly nothing.

"That's one of the reasons that our state numbers grew," he said.

And it's why they charge $88 a day, a per-diem rate arrived at under a federal formula. The other counties taking inmates agreed to $75. 

Ruiz said state inmates are housed separately, but the county didn't have to hire additional staff or open more housing units, which were two reasons that Lancaster County cited for not accepting state inmates in its new 779-bed jail on West O Street.

Ruiz said he's been pleasantly surprised by the conduct of the inmates.

"We're getting a more stable inmate," he said. "We don't get the usual problems that we would from a fresh arrest."

For instance, staff don't have to deal with state prisoners walking in straight off the street and coming down off of dope or emotional about an assault that just happened.

"It's been kind of refreshing," Ruiz said.

That's not to say they don't have inmates who occasionally try to push the limits in their new surroundings, he said.

But it's gone smoothly enough that they started putting inmates in work programs at the jail a couple of weeks ago.

Ruiz said he'd like to see more programming available for the state inmates. The jail has the classroom space and could work with the state to provide programming. He said he thinks county officials may be willing to invest in programming if they knew they'd be housing prison inmates for more than a year.

Right now, that's still up in the air.

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Foster, the prison spokesman, said the Corrections Department has asked for funding for the county jail agreement program through fiscal year 2017 and for money to expand it by 50 inmates.

Between staff, operating expenses and the per-diem rate, the department would need another $1.7 million, he said.

"We'd like for it to at least stay the same," Foster said.

But corrections officials won't know until the Legislature makes a decision on the budget request.

Foster said if they get the money, there probably will be discussions with jailers like Ruiz about programming.

If they don't, the program will go away on June 15, 2015, he said.

The Corrections Department hopes that doesn't happen.

"The county jail program has been an asset ... in managing the movement of the inmate population and relieving some of the congestion at DEC (Diagnostic and Evaluation Center)," Foster said in a written statement.

And that was the goal of the county jail agreement, he said.

All men sentenced to prison start their time at DEC, get evaluated and move along to longer-term facilities to do their time. Inmates are meant to be there for 90 days or less.

Foster said most of the inmates selected to go to a county jail are going straight from the Diagnostic and Evaluation Center and will stay at the jail for two to four months.

Some of the inmates being moved to jails are in prison on parole violations, he said, or they are community custody inmates who haven't been successful.

None are serving time for murder, sexual assault or robbery convictions.

Four months into the program, Foster acknowledges capacity at DEC is still an issue, in part because the system cannot control how many newly sentenced inmates come in.

On Sept. 30, the Diagnostic and Evaluation Center, designed to hold 160 inmates, held 480.

But, he said, the county jail program ultimately is making a difference.

"If they weren't at the county jail, they would be somewhere in the system right now."