New jail brings in more money
Thanks to the recently completed Cache County jail, the county is now receiving money from county, state and federal jails instead of paying money for the housing of Cache County inmates.
The new jail, which serves as both jail and administration building, now has enough room to hold its own inmates.
The jail is now also large enough to hold inmates from outside the county, bringing in revenue that will help the county jail pay for itself.
“We were housing our inmates in other jails, which was costing [the county] several hundred thousand [dollars] a year,” said Chief Deputy Dave Bennett of the Cache County Sheriff’s Office.
Before the new jail was built the county jail could only hold 77 inmates, Bennett said, which was nearly 40 less than the daily population of the jail in 2002.
The result was that the county had to house some of its inmates in neighboring Box Elder and Weber County jails, he said.
This cost the county, according to the Cache County Sheriff’s Office Web site, about $650,000 in 2002 alone.
Not only did the county have to send its inmates to other county jails, sometimes it just had to let them go, Bennett said.
According to the Web site, the old jail, which was built in 1964 and remodeled in 1993, was not large enough to suit the needs of the county.
In 2002, 11 inmates were released before their sentence was served in order to relieve overcrowding. That number was decreased from 1998, when 107 inmates were released prior to the fulfillment of their sentence.
“We needed a new jail, no ifs, ands, or buts, if we wanted [prisoners] to serve their full sentence,” said Capt. Kim Cheshire, also of the Cache County Sheriff’s Office.
“[The new jail] is absolutely a positive thing,” Bennett said. “We’ve been trying to get a new jail for several years.”
The Cache County Council, which holds the purse strings for the Cache County Sheriff’s Office, spearheaded the effort to get the county a new, more sufficient jail.
“We got a good deal,” Cheshire said about the cost of the new jail.
Bennett said the $14 million dollar facility, which beging constructed in October 2002 and was completed in March 2004, would probably cost about twice as much if the county tried to build it now.
“We built at the right time,” he said.
The new jail has a maximum capacity of 360 inmates and is also large enough to house state and federal inmates from outside the county.
Because the county no longer has to send its inmates to other jails, the out of county housing fees have virtually disappeared and money is now coming in from housing state and federal inmates.
The jail is scheduled to receive about 50 more federal inmates within the next few weeks, says Capt. Cheshire, which will take the total jail population to about 280 – still shy of the maximum capacity.
Cache County gets paid about $43 per day from the state for every state inmate that it houses, Bennet said.
With the current population of state inmates at 85, that’s about $3,655 a day.
With the new jail scheduled to house about 50 more federal inmates, the county could total about a million dollars a year.
That money goes to the county to pay for the deputies and for the new jail, Cheshire said.
“We wanted to make it so most of [the jail] would pay for itself,” Cheshire said.
The new jail is located at 135 W. 300North in Logan.
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