HUNTSVILLE -- Beginning Jan. 1, the Madison County sheriff's office will transition from operating a full-time jail to using the jail as a temporary holding facility.
On
Wednesday, four members of a regional Criminal Detention Facilities Review Committee discussed how long Madison County could hold prisoners before they must be transferred to a jail outside the county.
The committee unanimously approved the Madison County lockup as a 24-hour holding facility.
"The 24-hour thing will help me a lot," Sheriff Phillip Morgan said. "I'm so short-handed. I haven't got but usually one [deputy] on. They can't leave the county."
If a deputy makes an arrest in the middle of the night, the 24-hour holding period provides enough time for Morgan or Capt. Robert Boyd to arrive the next morning to transport the inmate, Morgan said.
Morgan has verbal agreements with sheriffs in Carroll and Washington counties to house Madison County inmates in their jails after the Madison County jail closes Dec. 31 as a full-time facility, he said.
County officials have anticipated the jail's closing since a Nov. 4 proposal for a 1 percent county sales tax failed. Had the measure passed, the county sales tax would have risen from 2 percent to 3 percent and raised an estimated $1 million for county projects.
County officials had planned for 25 percent of the revenue generated by the sales tax to go toward a county jail building fund.
The county's eight-bed jail, built in the 1980s, has been out of state compliance for years. A review committee put the jail on probation in July. The failure of the sales-tax election meant the county could not meet a Nov. 5 deadline the committee set for the county to have a long-term plan for resolving matters related to the size and safety features of the jail.
Danny Hickman, coordinator of the state's review committees for jails, told the regional committee over jails in Madison and Washington counties he thought 24-hour option would be the best solution for managing county prisoners.
"The situation that the sheriff is in, I've been in that situation having to deal with inmates," Hickman said. "If they bring somebody in at 2 a.m., they may not have somebody till noon to haul them out."
The moment an inmate is taken into the jail, the clock starts ticking, said committee member John Paul Davis, a Fayetteville resident who is a retired lieutenant colonel for Arkansas State Police. "If one deputy is on duty and working a scene, the deputy can't immediately leave for a 70-mile round trip to take a prisoner to Washington County."
In some cases, a prisoner will bond out of jail within 24 hours, making a trip out of the county unnecessary, Davis said.
"It makes sense," he said. "It gives them the time to get things processed."
NW News on 12/18/2014