The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office is on a trajectory to spend $350,000 on housing inmates in facilities other than the local jail for 2016-17.

The issue arose in the May 1 meeting of the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners, when county Chief Financial Officer Anita Radcliffe introduced the final list of budget amendments for the fiscal year. There were no appropriations from the fund balance; instead Radcliffe reallocated funds from various departmental line items. One of topics arising from the discussion was the amount of money the sheriff’s office spent on “safekeeping,” the process of sending inmates from the Beaufort County Detention Center to other facilities.

The sheriff’s office budgeted $135,000 for safekeeping for the year, but a natural disaster and a commitment to keeping inmate numbers down to improve jail operations sent the number skyward, according to Chief Deputy Charlie Rose.

Rose said the sheriff’s office initially requested $250,000 for safekeeping, but in budget negotiations with the county, agreed to $135,000, the historical average for the jail.

“For years, for safekeeping more funds were budgeted than were going to be used,” Rose said. “Two years ago, we began to try to budget with the actual number for things that we knew — if everything was normal — as close to actual and as close to true as we could.”

But three years ago, the sheriff’s office, county staff and county commissioners made a commitment to keep the jail population down, before that, the jail would regularly house upward of 100 inmates in a facility that only has 85 beds. Last year’s Jail and Justice System Assessment by the National Institute of Correction, the result of a months-long process exploring all aspects of crime, detention and the local justice system, suggested the same.

“Some of what we’re trying to operate under is some of the suggestions that were made during the jail and justice assessment,” Rose said. “One of those the suggestions through NIC was that we take a look at the difference between our rated capacity of 85 beds and our operational capacity, which by industry standards would be about 80 percent.”

Under the solid leadership of jail administrator Lt. Kat Bryan, the sheriff’s office has changed the business of running a jail for the good, Rose said, but it’s come with a cost: the estimated $350,000 safekeeping tab.

“We’ve had to move more people offsite for regular housing, not just because of overcrowding, but also taking inmates offsite for segregation,” he said.

 

Why the need for safekeeping?

The need for segregation — keeping inmates away from the general jail population, or certain inmates away from one another — comes from a variety of reasons, all of which impact how many people are in the jail at a given time, as well as the number of people in safekeeping at other facilities.

Juveniles cannot be housed with adult inmates: a single juvenile offender in the detention center means an entire small block must be dedicated to that juvenile, reducing overall the number of free beds in the facility, or the juvenile must be housed at a separate facility.

This applies to female inmates, as well. Women must be housed separately from men.

“If we have one female, she is rated a block that houses 12. So immediately that drops down the (rest of the inmate) population to the mid-70s,” Rose said.

Some inmates with injuries or illnesses must be kept out of the general population: injuries, because it could make that person vulnerable to the general jail population; illnesses, because an inmate with a contagious disease could spread that illness to the rest of the inmates.

“Most of the time we try to get them out of our system, whether that’s to North Carolina Central or a sister facility that has the space to handle that sickness better than we can,” Rose said.

Those with mental health issues may also be sent to safekeeping, if solely for his own safety — those with mental illness can be vulnerable within the jail population, according to Rose.

“Ultimately, it’s our responsibility to take care of the individual who has the mental illness, but also the other inmates who may be around that inmate,” Rose said.

Inmates with misdemeanor charges are kept separate from those with felony charges in the larger, dormitory-like A block, while those with felonies are housed in other blocks. Within those populations are a host of other considerations: whether someone jailed on a misdemeanor charge has past felony charges that would preclude being housed with other misdemeanants; interpersonal relationships between inmates, co-defendants incarcerated for the same crime kept away from one another to avoid collusion. Detention officers have to keep notes on file about which inmates don’t get along, simply to avoid fights, Rose said.

“if we know that these two inmates just can’t get along, we’ll try our best just not to house them together in the future,” Rose said.

It leads to a constant juggling of inmates from one block to another and from the local jail to other facilities.

“That is daily, sometimes hourly, that those decisions are made to try to keep our population as workable as we can. There’s just so many different types of inmates that we’ve got to house,” Rose said.

 

Hurricane Matthew

When a natural disaster hits, such as Hurricane Matthew in October 2016, everyone has to go. That’s not solely because the jail, located in the basement of the Beaufort County Courthouse, could have flooded. Other practicalities determined the facility would remain empty for two weeks.

“The most pressing factor was that our food is delivered from Plymouth, and whether we had one inmate or 85 inmates, we had to make sure they got their meals every day,” Rose said.

This, coupled with a lack in confidence of power holding during a major weather event, led to total evacuation. The majority of male inmates were sent to Bertie Correctional Institution in Windsor, female inmates to North Carolina Correctional Institute for Women in Raleigh and juveniles sent to Foothills Correctional Institution in Morganton, northwest of Charlotte.

The evacuation cost $50,000 of the total estimated $350,000 for 2016-17.

“That was in safekeeping, overtime and transportation costs to and from facilities,” Rose said.

The $50,000 will be refunded to the county by FEMA in 12 to 18 months, according to the county’s Chief Finance Officer Anita Radcliffe.

 

Ultimate Costs

Since Matthew happened in October, just three months in to the fiscal year that started in July, the sheriff’s office knew they would be operating at a safekeeping deficit for the rest of the year.

“We knew we were going to take a hit,” Rose said. “We tried to cut our own budget to offset the cost. That, along with some lapsed salary positions, that were not filled, made it so the finance office could make budget amendments to account for the storm and safekeeping overage.”

Rose said the sheriff’s office slashed funds initially budgeted for training, equipment, travel reimbursement for training, software and more from both the sheriff’s office and 911 communications budgets in order to fill the gap.

Rose said regardless of the overage in safekeeping costs, the sheriff’s office and detention center staff are doing what they can with what they have. The sheriff’s office budget submitted to county for fiscal year 2017-18 has $150,000 allotted for safekeeping, but there’s an understanding that number can be negotiated throughout the year, simply because there’s no other option.

“We run the jail based off of the needs of the justice system and the requirements that we have to fulfill because of state and federal law,” he said. “With the facility that we have this is the safest way we can run our facility.”