Arkansas Online

County seeks place to puts its detainees

BILL BOWDEN

Madison County Sheriff Rick Evans said he’s not sure what he’s going to do with the detainees he has in the Washington County jail in Fayetteville.

Tim Helder, the sheriff in Washington County, notified Evans that he can no longer house Madison County detainees because of overcrowding. The jailuse agreement between the two counties will end Dec. 31.

Madison County detainees have been held in the Washington County jail since 2015, when the Madison County jail in Huntsville — 30 miles east of Fayetteville — was downgraded to a 24-hour holding facility.

The Washington County jail has a total capacity of 710 beds. With legal requirements to keep different classifications of detainees separate, the jail’s operating capacity is about 80% of total capacity, said Chief Deputy Jay Cantrell with the Washington County sheriff’s office.

The Washington County jail held 733 detainees on Tuesday.

“The major reported that we had 77 people sleeping on the floor last night,” Cantrell said on Tuesday. “We give them double mattresses if they’re on the floor.”

He said double mattresses on the floor are just as comfortable as sleeping on the metal bunk beds. But it’s crowded.

Cantrell said the Washington County jail was holding 35 detainees for Madison County on Tuesday — 30 men and five women. He said that number had gotten as high as about 40 in recent months but was lower during the height of the covid-19 pandemic.

They’re not the kind of folks you can just turn loose.

“They’ve got some capital murders in here,” said Cantrell. “You can’t just put them on an ankle monitor and expect them to show up for court and not terrorize somebody while they’re out.”

Madison County pays $73.81 per day for each detainee held in Washington County. Madison County was billed $78,534 for 1,064 “detention board days” during the month of November, according to the Washington County jail’s monthly activity report. For January through November of this year, the total was about $600,000.

Located in the Ozark Mountains of Northwest Arkansas, Madison County has a population of 15,717. It’s the only county in the area that doesn’t have a jail.

Evans said the Carroll County jail in Berryville can take a few of his Madison County detainees, but he doesn’t know yet how many.

“I’ll have to find some other places,” he said. “We’re going to continue doing our job. We’ll just have to work through it.”

Evans said jails in other counties that border Madison County are full, so he may have to broaden his search geographically.

“All of our surrounding counties are full so that spreads it out real quick right there,” he said.

Newton County Sheriff Glenn Wheeler said he’ll try to help, but there’s only so much he can do. His jail in Jasper has a capacity of 30.

“We are bursting at the seams,” said Wheeler. “I have spoken with Sheriff Evans, and I’m going to try to help him out a little bit by trying to hold a couple of his folks. But I’m not sure we’re going to be able to get the room for that. We stay at capacity almost all the time.”

Frank Weaver, the county judge in Madison County, said he’s looking at options, and the Quorum Court will likely discuss those options at its next meeting on Dec. 20.

In 2014, Madison County got an estimate on the cost to build a new jail — $5.2 million for a 42-bed facility.

Weaver said the cost has surely gone up since then.

He said it might be possible to upgrade the jail in Huntsville so that it can hold a few detainees for longer periods than 24 hours. That jail was built in the early 1980s to accommodate eight beds.

In 2014, the state’s 4th District Criminal Detention Facilities Review Committee found that the Madison County jail didn’t comply with state standards.

Besides insufficient staffing, the committee cited eight violations at the lockup. One of the problems was that the jail didn’t meet the minimum requirement of 50 square feet of cell space per prisoner, and 70 square feet for those confined to cells for more than 16 hours a day.

Besides the cost of housing detainees in another jail, there’s also the cost of transporting them to and from Huntsville for court appearances.

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2021-12-08T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-12-08T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.arkansasonline.com/article/282024740554819

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