SHELBY, Ohio –Shelby City Council passed an emergency ordinance last week to appropriate $68,000 towards the Shelby Jail due to an influx of unexpected prisoner costs.
Shelby Police Chief Lance Combs explained to council that the original budget of $65,000 for the year turned out to be a vast underestimation.
“Our expenditures for half of the year basically depleted the budget,” said Combs. “Based on the numbers for six months, we need double the amount to finish the year.”
Council voted to appropriate an additional $65,000 to prisoner housing, and $3,000 to prisoner medical expenses. Councilmember Pat Carlisle noted the funds came from previously unappropriated monies.
Combs explained Shelby’s former finance director and police chief were forced to create a budget for the jail based solely on estimations – nobody anticipated the amount of outside housing the jail would require. Currently the jail has the capacity to hold 11 prisoners, two cellblocks for male and female prisoners with four beds in each, plus a work release dorm that holds three people.
“We have the capacity to double the size of [the cellblocks] from eight to 16, and we have a work release dorm, which houses three that we could double to six,” said Combs. “We don’t do that because we don’t have the staff, it becomes a little bit unsafe.”
Due to a shortage of staff – the department often operates at a minimum staffing level of two officers – and a high volume of prisoners, the Shelby Police Department is often forced to house prisoners at the Richland, Huron or Crawford County jails at varying costs.
Combs said currently the Shelby jail – a 12-day facility – is scheduled out to December with prisoners serving time, and often prisoners are rescheduled because of lack of jail space.
“When we get people with lengthy stays, we break those stays down over 12 days in and two days out,” Combs explained. “It costs us about $16 a day to house prisoners here, but we have a finite amount of space.
“Richland County Jail is the most expensive at $72 a day, Huron is $58 and Crawford is $45,” he continued. “In the case of somebody doing 365 days, you’re talking around $22,000 plus medical – we are also responsible for medical costs at those full-service facilities.”
Combs explained by law, the Shelby jail is required to have a method by which prisoners can report both routine and emergency medical requests, done through OhioHealth MedCentral Shelby Hospital’s emergency room. Often times, medical expenses go towards treating prisoners with addictions – Combs guessed up to 85 percent of Shelby’s jail population has a substance abuse problem.
“We end up sending them for treatment for withdrawal symptoms over the course of the 12 days they’re here,” he said. “They clean up, they get out and use and come back, and they’re going through withdrawal again. Those are issues we’re constantly trying to work on and figure out a way we can help.”
In addition, Combs said many of Shelby’s prisoners are unemployed, which has hindered the jail’s ability to utilize their work release program. Only three prisoners in the Shelby jail have been on work release since the jail opened in August 2014.
“Initially the goal was we would have a work release space available where people could pay to stay, get out and go to work then come back. The reality of that is, nobody that we’re arresting has a job,” said Combs. “We were using the work release dorm as overflow for misdemeanors when we were full.”
In an attempt to cut costs and curb the jail’s population, Combs said he is currently working with Shelby Municipal Court Judge Jon Schaefer on alternative sentences other than jail, such as community service. In the year since the jail opened in August 2014, the Shelby jail has housed 256 inmates – a 34 percent increase from the 191 inmates housed in the same time period the last time Shelby had a jail in 2006-2007.
In addition to housing more inmates, Combs said the average length of stay for inmates has increased from 6.81 days per prisoner in 2012 to 14.94 days per prisoner in 2015. Combs explained sentences were much shorter in the past when Shelby didn’t have its own jail in order to cut housing costs.
Despite an increase in inmates and their length of stay, the Shelby Police Department has not increased staff, which directly affects police statistics. Combs said while service calls have increased from 12,413 in 2012 to a projected 21,456 calls in 2015, the number of arrests made by Shelby officers has decreased from 1,725 in 2012 to a projected 1,008 in 2015.
“Our officers are much busier with the addition of the jail, and we are getting more calls for service, but at the same time arrests are down because we’re doing other things,” said Combs. “At the same time, sentences are jumping exponentially. There was no way we could’ve anticipated that.”
