By Ernie Hernandez
Cameron County Commissioner, Pct. 2
Jail overcrowding has been a major issue for at least the last five years, if not more.
Cameron County is currently spending over $7,000.00 per day to pay other counties to house our overflow. And the Texas Commission on Jail Standards has warned the Cameron County Sheriff's Department and the commission that it needs to hire more guards if it wants to continue housing the volume we handle now. Sheriff Omar Lucio estimates we need at least 24 more guards to handle our current count.
One issue that is aggravating our fiscal problem is that our county is collecting $38.50 for each federal inmate jailed here while it costs us almost $47.00 to house that same prisoner.
When you crunch the numbers, the facts are indisputable: We are daily losing $10.00 for each of the 300 Federal inmates we hold for the federal government here. We are spending $300,000 a month on outside care – $225,000 to other prisons and over a $100,000 to subsidize the Federal government.None of these monies, by the way, were budgeted in our current 2011-2012 budget, leading me to the conclusion that the expenditure of these funds is patently illegal.
Simply put, we are hemorrhaging at the rate of $10,000 a day with no end in sight.
And we don't need to "workshop" this to death. We need solutions now.
My suggestion is we expand the Carrizales-Rucker facility right away. There is already a plan to enclose an existing warehouse that has been approved by the Texas Dept. of Corrections. The cost of the architectural and engineering plan is a manageable egeable $350,000 and the total construction cost would be between $5 to $8 million to be finished in eight months. But once in operation, the income stream to the county will be significant.
This part of facility will add 350 beds in a minimum security setting. Another 500 hundred beds need to be added to plan for future growth and consolidate prison operations.
This part of facility will add 350 beds in a minimum security setting. Another 500 hundred beds need to be added to plan for future growth and consolidate prison operations.
Consider this: We currently have four jail facilities. This means four sets of guards, four supervisors, four kitchens and four infirmaries. We had the same problem with our separate Road and Bridge precincts until we consolidated them into one Public Works Department.
Consolidation will also help clear up our jail staff-to-prisoner ratio and keep down our total costs without being redundant. Adding a small courthouse facility will save us the expenditures of transporting them downtown for arraignment. There has been some efforts at this, but we need a system-wide effort that would result in huge savings for the county.
The additional space that would result in closing the downtown detention centers will instantly create more space for county offices and the possibility of a new business venture with the federal government.
We need to negotiate a more equitable contract for housing federal inmates with the government and adopt one more favorable to our county. At $60 per day, for the downtown facilities that have 480 beds available would create a $5 million dollar profit, and new jobs.
One of the strongest selling points would be location, location, location. The proximity to the federal courthouse is only two blocks. The government could not ask for a better situation for prisoner transport.
We are the 11th largest county in the state of Texas, rank seventh in jail populations in the state. Yet, we are ranked second in the state for jail incarcerations, with almost 2.79 of our population. And, to the dismay of our local taxpayers, we rank fifth in the state among counties housing prisoners elsewhere.
That warning five or six years ago that our county needed to add bed spaces was ignored, for whatever reason.
Our fund balance dropped over $3 million dollars over the the last 2 years because of this prisoner overflow. If we do not come up with solutions now we are going to break the county. It is time to bite the bullet, borrow the money, renegotiate with the government and start building now
email ernie.hernandez@co.cameron.tx.us
5 comments:
C’mon JM, I am highly skeptical anytime Ernie becomes “concerned” over any budget issue (jail crowding in this case). His plan smacks of something he stands to personally benefit from one way or another. I would seriously examine, preferably under a microscope, any proposal Ernie comes up with. His suggestion of expanding the Carrizales-Rucker facility is not being done because he is interested in saving money for the county or its residents. I wouldn’t put it past him if he has already cut a deal with a contractor that will kick back a percentage of the construction fees if this plan comes to fruition. As the Spanish saying goes “ El no toma paso sin huarache”
I wonder how much Ernie is going to make off of this deal?
The answer to every problem is not to hire more employees. Streamlining the process by which inmates are processed in order to identify them in order to kep track of how long they are held in custody would be a great start. Then, categorize them by offense, misdemeanor or felony, and put a comprehensive policy in place to clearly notify each Municipality of the brief amount of time inmates will be held at Cameron County expense. After a Defendant is held more than 30 days at Carrizales-Rucker Detention Center without a formal charge having been charged, because the local police department has not filed the offense report, then the Defendant should either have his bond turned into a PR bond by the Magistrate who set the bond in the first place or the Municipality shall be responsible to pay for the inmates continued confinement. A similar plan can be put in place regarding Defendants being held without a formal charge having been filed for over 90 days.
A major problem is the extremely long delay in getting police reports filed in the first place.
Address the reason for the delay in formal charges being filed makes more sense than hiring more employees to implement the same ineffective policies.
I suggested quite a few solutions years ago, and there are many more ideas, however, no one has been paying attention.
diogenes put it well this deal stinks and ernie has a gain here or else no deal
Hey Juan
No reports on the son of the DA candidate who got arrested? Will it be swept under the rug?
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