The Tooele County Detention Center is running near capacity again, with revenues exceeding expectations over the past two years.
There were 231 inmates in the county jail on Monday, including 68 state inmates and 53 U.S. Marshal holds. The remaining 110 inmates in the 277-bed facility were local holds.
Tooele County Sheriff Paul Wimmer said the number of inmates in the jail can fluctuate, especially at the beginning of the week, before local inmates have their initial court appearance and may be released or make bail. But the general population figure is around 235.
The current inmate numbers are a stark contrast from 2016, when the jail had only 91 total inmates, with four federal prisoners. At the time, the county jail was only holding about nine to 10 federal inmates.
The county jail began accepting state inmates in June, with the population ramping up in July, according to Wimmer.
When the $25 million facility was built in 2011, the county administration’s intention was to use outside inmates to augment jail revenues and help pay the $1.6 million yearly bond payment. In the previous two years, revenue from contract inmates exceeded the bond payment through a combination of state, federal and Salt Lake County inmates. It’s on pace to exceed it again in 2019.
“That was kind of their original intent, was to get a bunch of contract beds to help pay for the bond payment,” Wimmer said. “I think the timing was just bad … Their intention was to fill it full of feds, but the feds just never had the numbers for us. So we had to look to the state to fill us up.”
In 2015, the county jail generated $725,718 in revenue from contract beds, according to information provided by Tooele County. The revenue declined to $578,088 the following year.
The trend reversed course in 2017, with $1.76 million in contract bed revenue after the jail accepted Salt Lake County’s excess inmates for a full year and the U.S. Marshal’s office began to send more inmates. In 2018, the revenue climbed to $2.46 million with federal and Salt Lake County inmates.
Wimmer said Salt Lake County inmates were replaced with state prisoners midway through the current year, and he expects similar revenue figures by year’s end.
Tooele County was able to step in after Weber County chose not to renew its agreement with the state to house its inmates, according to Wimmer. The state pays about $54 per inmate per day; federal prisoners generate $60 in revenue daily.
The jail does take temporary holds from federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but they are generally in-and-out of the facility in a short period of time.
While the jail receives less daily revenue from state inmates, Wimmer said there are built-in benefits to taking them over federal inmates. State inmates are transported and clothed by the state, have medical needs met or reimbursed by the state and are served by a caseworker to ensure their needs are met.
There’s also more flexibility in selecting which state prison inmates come to the county jail, while the federal inmates are generally selected by the federal government, according to Wimmer.
“We don’t really get to pick and choose with the feds,” he said. “We just get what they bring. About the only justification to move them out of here before they’re ready is if there’s a direct conflict with say, we don’t have the bed space or the means to separate rival gang members or something like that.”
With less control on the selection process, the county jail has held a variety of federal inmates ranging from white collar criminals to murder suspects. The process with the state prison is quite a bit different, according to Wimmer.
“They know our medical capability and so what happens is they go through and they basically create a list of inmates that are eligible to be placed in Tooele County’s jail,” he said. “And we go through and we select, and we basically earmark, ‘Ok, when he needs to go, we have the space. He’s welcome in Tooele County.’”
For state prison holds, the focus is more on the ability to meet medical and programming needs, Wimmer said. Exceptions are also made for possible conflict like gang affiliation or case-specific reasons to keep an inmate out of the county.
“Any time we would identify a conflict of any kind, we don’t have to take any one person but it is our goal to take as many as we can,” Wimmer said, of state inmates.
Many of the state inmates are older, which means they’re generally less disruptive to the general population in the jail. The real challenges come in meeting the medical needs of those aging and incarcerated, Wimmer said.
As a result, some state contract inmates will be taken to the state prison so their medical needs can be properly addressed, according to Wimmer.
On the staffing front, Wimmer said the jail is essentially in a constant state of hiring, but was down only one corrections deputy, not counting those in training or waiting to accept offers.