NORWICH – Even though Chenango County earned record revenues last year from boarding in out-of-county prisoners, officials are cautious about using the surplus to make repairs at the six-year-old Public Safety Facility.
The cost of inmates’ medical bills – with one recently chalking up more than $15,000 in locally-provided mental health care – is of further concern, as is a lower number of guest prisoners currently incarcerated.
Chenango County Sheriff Ernest Cutting said he was concerned about meeting this year’s earnings projections for boarders. Revenues in 2011 were $851,000 versus $562,000 in 2010. 2012’s budget expectations are for $650,000.
“2011 was an outstanding year, right up around the highest we ever got. .... But only three times in our short history of doing this have we made more than $350,000,” Cutting said in an interview for The Evening Sun’s Progress edition.
There are currently eight out-of-county convicts imprisoned at the Public Safety Facility on Upper Ravine Road in Norwich, compared to a daily average of 15 last year. The jail’s overall inmate population averages about 105 per day, with a capacity for 129. To hold back expenses, the sheriff temporarily closed a pod at the end of last year.
Sheriff Cutting requested moving $50,000 to his repair budget in order to seal the parking lot, to purchase a new dishwasher and to replace three electronic locks. He said more new locks will needed in the future. During discussion of his budget at a Finance Committee meeting, Supervisor Dennis Brown, D-Pharsalia, cautioned Cutting to hold onto his surplus, and suggested moving over funds from county surplus instead.
Set-aside funds intended to meet prisoners’ increasing medical needs – from drug overdoses to mental illness – have fallen short for the past two years. The cost of forensic services delivered to jail inmates in particular, and picked up locally by Chenango County Mental Hygiene Services department, prompted Supervisor Robert M. Jeffrey, R-City of Norwich, to question whether taking in guest prisoners – along with their mental health problems – was actually profitable.
“How much of these medical costs are for farmed-in prisoners?” he asked.
Cutting said he always requests that counties not send him their high-maintenance individuals.
“We tell them we don’t want their problems, and not to send those types of inmates to us. But sometimes there are problems. But it’s nothing that I’m concerned with, in terms of overall cost,” he said. “On average, they’re no worse than our locals. We get as dangerous people here, too.”
MHS Director Ruth Roberts said corrections law requires mental health to provide forensic services to the jail, but predicting an amount to budget for it is difficult.
The gross cost to operate the new jail, including personnel salaries, maintenance and expenses, is about $6.2 million per year. Operations costs back in 2006 at the former jail in downtown Norwich were between $600,000 and $1 million a year.