About half of the jail cell pods arrived at the site for the Bourbon County Law Enforcement Center Tuesday morning, with the remainder scheduled to come in next week.
The pods, which each include eight cells, with two beds in each, arrived already fabricated and ready to put in place. Their complete installation including welding is expected to be accomplished by the end of next week.
The pods will provide beds for 76 inmates, but the original site plans included a place for one more pod that would provide 16 more beds. During the Bourbon County Commission meeting Tuesday morning, Sheriff Bill Martin encouraged the commission to consider going ahead and getting that pod while the building is still being constructed.
Martin gave a report on the responses he got from surrounding counties he had contacted about housing their inmates. Many showed interest, including Wichita’s Kansas Department of Corrections, while other counties said they were too far away to transport inmates to Bourbon County.
Martin said he also spoke with counties that recently constructed or added on to their own jails, and those corrections departments shared advice that Bourbon County not be conservative in their number of beds, since even their newer and larger facilities are filling up.
Housing out-of-county inmates could bring in an additional $35 per inmate per day, and the excess number of beds would also insure that Bourbon County would not have to pay other counties to house local inmates.
Martin said now may be a good time to go ahead and get that pod, since the space is available and it would be easy to put in while the building is still open and other pods are being placed. Once the building is complete, it would be more expensive and difficult to open the building back up in order to install it.
The commissioners said that decision would be made based on the available funding.
Woo Hoo, that’s one way to stop the population decline in the county, just invite the worst people you can find to come stay for a while. What happens when these “guest” get released? Will the other counties come and take them back? I don’t think so…..That means the City of Ft Scott will end up with great new additions to our community. And for what? So the county make a few bucks? This may be the beginning of the end for Ft Scott as you know it……………………
When inmates are housed in a facility outside their sentencing jurisdiction they are always returned upon completion of their sentence to their jurisdiction. I have never had an inmate released to the community in which they are being housed and serving a sentence. They are housed because of lack of space or other issues, we do not change their address for them or release them into our community.
Please stop by office with questions, comments or other concerns. False information is not helpful to anyone.
Since this new jail facility has not opened yet, we can only comment on intention, not operational fact. Time will tell what is true and what is false……..Best of luck to you Sherriff Bill, and best of luck to all of us that will be affected by this jail…………
How much does a pod cost?
That information was not available at the time the article was printed. We will try to gain that information.