There has not been a vacancy at the DeKalb County Jail for five years.

“The average number of prisoners in the jail this year has been 103,” said Roger Scott, DeKalb County sheriff. “We have 89 spaces available to us in the jail, but even those we can’t use all at once.”

Not all space can be utilized at once because of a concept called functional capacity, which segregates prisoners into manageable sub-sections: male/female, violent/non-violent, etc.

“It depends on the characteristics of the prisoners and crimes, but right now, we have a functional capacity of 72,” said Ray Bockman, DeKalb County administrator.

Bunk beds were added to the jail in the mid-90s; it was constructed in 1980 to house only 64 inmates.

This year’s average of 103 is well over the functional capacity of 72, with a disparity of 31 prisoners.

DeKalb County has to rent jail space from neighboring counties who are able to accommodate their inmate population. The complications involved in such a venture can balloon an already stretched County sheriff budget.

“In a week, inmates make two to three trips from the neighboring jails to the DeKalb County facilities where they are being tried,” said Scott. “If the minimum stay of an inmate is thirty days and the maximum is a year, one has to think about what the distance between their jail and our county means in terms of scheduling, labor, transportation and time costs.”

In 2008, the sole cost of shipping and housing the inmates in other jails will be $300,000.

In 2006, the cost was around $271,000.

In early 2002, no single inmates were shipped to another counties’ jail.

“We usually have 20 to 25 inmates out at a time,” Bockman said. “But I believe within the next couple years we will be routinely shipping out 30 to 35. The trend is always going up.”

The source of the problem is too many inmates and it is resulting in part from DeKalb County’s expanding population.

“No one looked at the downside of population growth,” Scott said. “Our public services suffer the most from population expansion. There has been no reconciliation between those who want more residents and those who know we don’t have the services in place to accommodate them.”

However, the jail crisis did not come as a surprise.

In 1990, the first of three outside studies predicted the jail system overflow in DeKalb County.

The sheriff’s office has acted on almost every condition proposed by the studies, including the implementation of new tactics to reduce the jail population. These tactics include: electric monitoring systems, weekend bail calls, structured release, added staffing in drug court operations, and many others. Yet, the problem persists.

“We’ve worked through all of the good ideas, and now we have to start considering the bad ones,” Bockman said.

Other ideas are to take out 40-year bonds as opposed to 20-year, which accumulate massive amounts of interest in comparison. A half-penny “public safety” tax would solve the jail overflow, but it has been voted against by the general electorate twice.

Another solution would be for the sheriff’s office to build the extension of the jail. The money spent on the overflow could be going to a new wing of the DeKalb County Jail, which would house an extra 295 inmates. Instead, it is going to counties that already have jail space to accommodate their equally expanded population.

“Citizens think we have the money for a new jail,” Scott said. “But we do not have the money to staff a larger complex.”

A different option would be a formal and lengthy rental of space from Boone County and other county jails. The source for the money needed would most likely come from a property tax with no stipulations for a general electorate vote.

“The situation is not as aggravating as it is curious. Someone else in some other county is getting our money and our jobs,” said Bockman. “With our money, they are getting the services our residents should be getting.”