By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – The Lewis County Jail could see increased revenue of approximately $440,000 annually under a new agreement to house prisoners from Mason County.
The facility in Chehalis operated by the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office has long provided bed space for other local law enforcement agencies. It currently has contracts also with Thurston County, the city of Olympia and the state Department of Corrections.
The agreement provides for 20 to 25 inmates from the Mason County Sheriff’s Office at any given time, at a rate of $60.38 per day. It was finalized on Monday when the Lewis County Board of Commissioners signed off on it.
The Lewis County Jail, expanded in 2005, is constructed to hold as many as 356 inmates, according to Jail Administrator Kevin Hanson. However, it’s currently funded for staffing to manage no more than 240 inmates.
The one-year contract with Mason County contains a provision for annual renewal upon agreement of both parties.
The city of Centralia earlier this month decided to use the jail in Yakima for some of its prisoners, deciding to send them individuals who are sentenced to more than two weeks.
Centralia Police Chief Carl Nielsen told the city council he could save about $10,000 a year, given an increase in the fee charged by the Lewis County Jail.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
red tape says: Your veterans died in vain. Your country is lie.
Well put and so terribly sad. The powers that be can’t stop sending our young men and women overseas to be blown to bits. Our own foreign policy has created the hate the Muslim militants have for us. They didn’t learn to hate us in a vacuum.
When a entity becomes for profit – and it doesn’t matter if private or public – then the point of the entity is to make a profit. If the jail cell beds are empty, they must be filled. That means finding inmates… from somewhere. I think that can be a slippery slope when the focus is to fill jail cells rather than ensure citizen safety.
Dont be suprised if we see a cross state crime wave from these county lease-a-bed policies. We all know they get connections when they are in jail.
I’m not sure Thurston County’s even opened their new jail yet. Biggest waste of public money to build an unused structure in SW Washington since the Satsop nuke plant. That’s what I can think of, anyway.
expanded the jail to 356 inmates,… the guards are so expensive,… they cant staff with their current budget,… so they can only house 240 inmates. sounds like a plan to suck every penny out of every inmate. essentially “slaving out” the tax payers to pay for incarcerated dope heads. I thought they banned slavery after the civil war? Leave it up to our leaders to screw us into a hole all in the name of safety. Meanwhile “working poor” are looking at the prospects of either jail themselves or joining law enforcement to take advantage of disproportionate wages. Communism and slavery are alive and well. Your veterans died in vain. Your country is lie. Your cushy state job is not needed. Go back to college and find a cure for cancer or liberal disease. Its called a budget spreadsheet all successful businesses have them, commonly known as Excel made by a company named microsoft. Appearantly our leaders dont know how to manage things on a macro level but their benefit packages are stellar. The steady influx of meth into our county through certain channels insures a constant wave of gacked out youth ready for jail. Rediculous
Didn’t thurston county pull all of there inmates out and place them in there new jail in there county?