OCR Text |
Show Criminal Justice Complex caches Cache Co. inmates By MARK EDD1NGTON Staff Writer FARMINGTON At least 30 prisoners will be added to the list of inmates serving time in the Davis County Jail while the Cache County Jail is upgraded to comply with a federal court order. A group of prisoners filed a lawsuit against Cache County in October 1990, charging the facility was overcrowded and unsafe. Cache County Sheriff's officials are shipping the inmates to the Davis facility for at least the next four weeks while the jail is enlarged and upgraded to meet health and safety requirements. With 200 inmates, the Davis County Jail is Well below its full capacity of 386. Cache County Sheriff Sid Groll said the inmates were being shipped to Davis County Coun-ty because it is the closest jail they could find that had any room. Kenny Payne, chief deputy at the Davis County Sheriff's Office, said 14 of the inmates are already here and the remainder are expected to arrive soon. Transfer of some of the prisoners has been delayed until they have met all their court commitments com-mitments in Cache County. "It would make little sense for them (Cache County deputies) to bring these inmates down here if they had to turn around and pick them up the next day to appear in court,' said Capt. Jan Cunningham, commander of the Davis jail. Those arrested in Cache County during the $3.1 million remodeling will be held in a small building adjacent ad-jacent to the jail. Capacity of the 30-year-old jail will double from 40 to 80 prisoners once the upgrade is completed. The first phase of the project will remove all asbestos in the building. More work on the jail's interior is scheduled later in the year, which could necessitate yet another prisoner transfer. The extensive remodeling is expected to be completed by Feb. 1, 1993. Cache County will be billed $35 a day per prisoner, which reflects the cost of housing prisoners at its facility. Actual costs for housing inmates locally is $50. Despite the cost differential, Cunningham said the county will not lose money. "We have a back and forth agreement. If we have to have someone housed up there for protective pro-tective custody or something, then we'll haul them up there and they will take care of our inmates for their entire stay at no cost,' ' he said. Cache County has also agreed to send some deputies along with the inmates to complement the contingent con-tingent of security personnel already in place at the Davis County Jail. Payne said he expects the officers offi-cers on loan will be adequate to compensate for any additional workload. The $35 charge pays for a cell, food and clothes. Any medical costs incurred by the extra inmates will be covered by Cache County. Classification officers from both jails have coordinated their efforts to ensure serious offenders are housed together rather than with inmates convicted of lesser crimes. Cunningham said housing the inmates in-mates according to a classification system lowers inmate capacity by 20 percent, but added even with that system the jail would still have plenty of room. t |