The Associated Press
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- The Metro Louisville jail is nearly 300 inmates over its capacity, less than five years after it opened.
Corrections Director George DeTella, who took over the post in May, blamed the overcrowding in part on a high number of recent arrests. DeTella said the overcrowding is putting stress on the jail’s “personnel, physical plant and support system.”
DeTella said every option for alleviating crowding will be explored, including the possibility of reopening a work-release center. As one immediate step, Chief Jefferson District Judge Donald Armstrong said Thursday that he has scheduled a special holiday arraignment for Labor Day to try to release some inmates who would otherwise sit in jail until Tuesday.
Armstrong said part of the crowding stems from the fact that many people charged with misdemeanors can’t afford to pay fines and court costs and end up in jail. The judge added that the crowding soon may be eased in part because state officials have found a way to put 120 more misdemeanor offenders in a supervised probation program, which had 86 people in it as of Thursday.
When the $28 million main jail at Sixth and Liberty streets opened in December 1999 with 983 beds, Schuyler Olt, a top aide to then-Judge-Executive Rebecca Jackson, predicted it would meet the county’s corrections needs “for at least 15 years.”
After it was opened, the old county Fiscal Court terminated contracts with two private work-release centers that together held about 500 low-risk inmates -- the Dismas Center in western Louisville and River City Corrections Center at Eighth and Market streets.
DeTella said the jail should house 1,254 inmates. As of Thursday, 1,551 inmates were being held. He said the number last weekend was 1,650, “the highest since I’ve been here.”
In addition, the Jefferson County Corrections Center on East Chestnut Street, which houses lower-risk inmates, had a population yesterday of 440, one over the capacity, DeTella said.
“In all honesty ... it’s not a single reason,” DeTella said of the overcrowding. “It’s the entire system, including law-enforcement activity, courts, processing, sentencing guidelines, legislation, ordinances.”
DeTella said getting more inmates into programs that are alternatives to incarceration is the best way to alleviate crowding.
“You can’t build your way out of this,” he said.