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Boyle jail will try ankle bracelets to reduce overcrowding

January 23, 2008|TODD KLEFFMAN

In an effort to reduce overcrowding at the jail, Boyle Fiscal Court agreed Tuesday to supply ankle bracelets to qualified inmates on a trial basis.

The population at the Boyle County Detention Center on Tuesday was 298 inmates in a facility designed to house 225. The jail has been running 60 to 80 inmates above capacity for the past several months.

Magistrates agreed to let County Attorney Richard Campbell and Jailer Barry Harmon select a few inmates to be outfitted with electronic ankle bracelets and serve their jail time at home.

Campbell said only non-violent offenders will be chosen to participate and a judge also will have to sign off on the plan.

The county already has a relatively low-tech ankle bracelet system that requires a land line phone to make sure an inmate doesn't leave his home. More and more people rely solely on cell phones, reducing the number of inmates who would be eligible.

The existing system costs the county about $5 a day per inmate. The cost of housing a prisoner in the jail is about $22 a day.

The court also approved the trial use of a few more expensive ankle bracelet systems, which would cost about $14 a day and use GPS technology to monitor inmates wherever they go. The more advanced system would be used on riskier inmates.

In the past, the county has offered home incarceration to eligible inmates willing to pay $10 a day to participate in the program. Few inmates could afford the price, Campbell said, and only about 10 inmates a year chose to pay for the privilege of serving their jail time at home.

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