During Monday’s regularly-scheduled Trigg County Fiscal Court meeting, magistrates were given a very quick snapshot of the ultimate costs for prisoner extradition and local incarceration.
In his bi-weekly report discussing the county’s expenditures, Judge-Executive Hollis Alexander relayed the extradition of three inmates from the states of California, Utah and Alabama in the last month came to a hefty $10,796 through Prisoner Transport Services of America, LLC — a nationwide service that taxis nearly 30,000 inmates for more than 1,200 federal agencies annually.
Alexander did note that price tag will likely lower through reimbursements provided by the Commonwealth, but Trigg County’s August bill for its inmate boarding at the Christian County Jail likely won’t — as it totaled $30,405 for the month.
Why? Because — just like in the hotelier business, or really anything in the U.S. economy — supply and demand work hand-in-hand.
The more local arrests and convictions that come across the dockets, the less room is available for things like jail cells — which suddenly come with a higher premium.
District 4 Magistrate Jeff Broadbent posed the original question to the court.
According to the Federal Register and the United State National Archives, the average cost of incarceration for Federal inmates was $94.82/day during the 2016 fiscal year, and $99.45/day during the 2017 fiscal year. To confine an inmate to a residential re-entry center in the same time span went from nearly $80/day to almost $89/day.
In other business:
— Alexander reported that Trigg County has “about” 140-plus active cases of COVID-19 at this time.
— The fiscal court unanimously approved the expenditure of nearly $7,000 to mail out tax bills to the county.
— The county will sponsoring a tire roundup for recycling on October 14-15 at the Trigg County Road Department. On that Thursday, the pickup will go from 8 a.m. until 3:30 p.m., and on that Friday it’ll go from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. No appointments are necessary at this time.
— Alexander specifically lauded Brandon Calhoun and the Trigg County Road Department for their work on King’s Chapel Road near “the Jungle,” using a rented wheel excavator to rebuild the shoulder.
