Keith Roysdon, writing for the Muncie Star Press, has a story on the overcrowding at the Delaware County Jail. Apparently the county is housing inmates at other jails and now the Sheriff plans on transporting Department of Correction inmates as quickly as he can instead of waiting until they have several at a time to transport. After trial and sentencing to the Department of Corrections, it can take a while for inmates to actually be moved from the jail to the DOC. The county has paid $343,000 this year on housing county inmates in other jails and are budgeting $750,000 for next year.
The county jail is supposed to house 220 inmates. Scroggins said the county had 265 inmates in jail Monday with another 42 in Blackford County, one in Jay County, 14 in the sheriff’s home detention program, four in Delaware County Community Corrections home detention and 165 placed on pre-trial probation by local judges.
Overcrowding is a decades-old problem at the jail, which was built and opened in 1992 to settle a federal court inmate lawsuit over unconstitutional conditions at the county’s former jail.
Sounds like they need to expand their jail. Additionally, I would expect the problems to be exacerbated with the recent overhaul of the criminal code which can be expected to add pressure to local jails and community corrections programs.
Can we retire the term “overcrowding?” Crowding seems sufficient, without raising the unanswered question of the difference between crowding and overcrowding. Or we could say “exhausted capacity.” But not overcrowding, please.
I’m going to keep using the word. But I certainly won’t complain if you don’t.