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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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Study: Local jail budgets don’t cover all costs

Researchers say other agencies often chip in

The Columbian
Published:

Local Angle: Clark County Jail’s daily bed rate factors in all costs

The $83.81 it takes to house one inmate in the Clark County Jail for one day encompasses a lot of costs that people might not consider. The jail staff, health care, food, utilities, equipment, reentry programs and overhead are all calculated into the daily bed rate.

“It’s the full cost to house an inmate for a day,” said Darin Rouhier, finance manager for the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.

Overhead costs include costs from other county departments including information services, human resources and facilities management. Those indirect costs, which represent 12.13 percent added to the direct costs, are calculated into that daily bed rate, according to the county’s 2015 central service cost allocation plan.

Local Angle: Clark County Jail's daily bed rate factors in all costs

The $83.81 it takes to house one inmate in the Clark County Jail for one day encompasses a lot of costs that people might not consider. The jail staff, health care, food, utilities, equipment, reentry programs and overhead are all calculated into the daily bed rate.

"It's the full cost to house an inmate for a day," said Darin Rouhier, finance manager for the Clark County Sheriff's Office.

Overhead costs include costs from other county departments including information services, human resources and facilities management. Those indirect costs, which represent 12.13 percent added to the direct costs, are calculated into that daily bed rate, according to the county's 2015 central service cost allocation plan.

Years ago, the county directly paid Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency for providing 911 dispatch services; it was a separate cost on top of law enforcement. Now, that cost goes into the sheriff's office budget.

"It's still money flowing to CRESA from the county," Rouhier said. Including 911 dispatch in the budget more accurately reflects the true cost of law enforcement.

So while the jail uses resources -- such as county human resources to recruit and hire corrections deputies -- it's considered in the price of running the jail.

"I guess it's how you do your budgeting," Rouhier said.

If expenses increase, the bed rate goes up. Food, wages and benefits and health care costs can all change. In general, when there are more inmates in the jail, the bed rate will be less because the cost of running the jail is spread out over more inmates, Rouhier said.

There's a very prescribed way of saying how much the jail costs because state law requires cities to reimburse the county for inmates jailed for misdemeanors. The costs are determined the same way year after year.

"There are so many different ways you can construct a budget," he said. "Really, how far do you go to roll costs in?"

-- Patty Hastings

Years ago, the county directly paid Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency for providing 911 dispatch services; it was a separate cost on top of law enforcement. Now, that cost goes into the sheriff’s office budget.

“It’s still money flowing to CRESA from the county,” Rouhier said. Including 911 dispatch in the budget more accurately reflects the true cost of law enforcement.

So while the jail uses resources — such as county human resources to recruit and hire corrections deputies — it’s considered in the price of running the jail.

“I guess it’s how you do your budgeting,” Rouhier said.

If expenses increase, the bed rate goes up. Food, wages and benefits and health care costs can all change. In general, when there are more inmates in the jail, the bed rate will be less because the cost of running the jail is spread out over more inmates, Rouhier said.

There’s a very prescribed way of saying how much the jail costs because state law requires cities to reimburse the county for inmates jailed for misdemeanors. The costs are determined the same way year after year.

“There are so many different ways you can construct a budget,” he said. “Really, how far do you go to roll costs in?”

— Patty Hastings

Average daily bed rate for the Clark County Jail

2013 — $77.92

2014 — $81.02

2015 — $83.81

NEW YORK — It turns out running a jail can be even more expensive than previously thought.

A study released Thursday examining what it actually costs to operate local lockups has found that a whole host of costs — from providing inmate health care to funding employee benefits — aren’t always covered as line items in a corrections department’s budget.

Instead, researchers from the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice found those costs are sometimes covered by other county agencies or general funds, adding to the true costs of incarceration.

“Knowing the actual price of jail is fundamental to reform,” said Christian Henrichson, the report’s lead author. “Without a grasp of the costs, policymakers will not know the full scale of potential savings.”

Running the more than 3,000 county jails across the country, which nearly 12 million people pass through every year, is notoriously expensive and federal statistics put the price tag at about $22.2 billion.

But the Vera researchers, who surveyed 35 jails of all sizes from 18 different states with a combined average daily population of 64,920, found that another agency besides the corrections department or sheriff’s office paid for costs representing between 1 percent and 53 percent of total jail costs.

The New York City Department of Correction, which runs the nation’s second-largest jail system with about 11,000 average daily inmates, has a $1.1 billion budget. But an additional $1.2 billion from outside the budget is spent on jail operations such as inmate health care, education programs and pension obligations, the researchers found.

In Boulder County, Colorado, which has a $14 million annual jail budget for the 484 average daily inmates, another $4.6 million is spent on the jails from outside agencies. And King County Public Health paid $29 million in health care for Seattle inmates last fiscal year, representing about 20 percent of all jail costs, the study found.

The biggest jail expense across the board is staffing for corrections officers, including salaries and benefits, which on average account for about 75 percent of the surveyed jails’ expenses.

Decreasing the overall inmate population is the only way to achieve significant savings, the report concludes.

Average daily bed rate for the Clark County Jail

2013 -- $77.92

2014 -- $81.02

2015 -- $83.81

In Albuquerque, N.M., where officials have instituted a series of criminal justice reforms such as issuing more citations than arrests, the jail population dropped over the course of fiscal 2014 by about 39 percent, from 2,496 inmates-per-day to 1,523. That decrease has allowed officials to stop spending money on out-of-county jail beds and to close a housing unit.

And in Springfield, Mass., where dropping crime, fewer arrests and an increase of diversion and supervision programs resulted in a 30 percent drop in the inmate population between 2008 and 2014, the sheriff’s department closed six 55-bed housing units among other cutbacks, saving the department $13.1 million.

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