Raging Jasper jail fire forces the transfer of 32 inmates into Beaufort’s County cells

The Beaufort County Detention Center has been hit with a new challenge as the jail helped hold inmates for a neighboring county in need. Several inmates and corrections officers were injured after a fire at the Jasper County jail last month, reducing capacity in a facility that already struggled with overcrowding.

This means that 32 inmates from Jasper County are now incarcerated at the Beaufort County jail Monday afternoon, according to John Robinson, Beaufort County’s assistant county administrator of public safety. These transfers brought the jail’s current inmate count to 243, just shy of its maximum capacity of 255. Typically, the count fluctuates between 150 and 200, Robinson said.

Clad in neon-green jumpsuits instead of Beaufort County’s orange getup, the Jasper County inmates were being held in an “open housing unit” separate from the rest of the facility, Robinson said. Two corrections officers from Jasper County kept watch of the unit each shift.

The relocation is made possible by a mutual aid resolution made between Beaufort, Jasper and other neighboring counties, according to Robinson. The agreement encompasses 11 counties — including Beaufort, Jasper and most of the Lowcountry — and allows the transfer of detainees to other county jails during an “emergency” that affects their facilities.

“It’s mutual, so they provide the service to us, and we provide that service to them,” Robinson said.

Officials had not announced a cause of the Sept. 21 fire that reportedly sparked in a holding cell at the Jasper County Detention Center in Ridgeland, injuring three officers and three inmates, according to reporting from Bluffton Today . Beaufort and Hampton counties began housing a portion of new Jasper County inmates who could not be held in the damaged cell.

Sharing a building with the sheriff’s office, the Jasper County jail had grappled with insufficient space even before the blaze. A County Council agenda item from March 2024 says the facility used a multipurpose room as an “overflow” housing unit despite the room not being approved for living space. Overcrowding also prevented staff from separating pretrial female inmates from sentenced female inmates as required, according to findings from the South Carolina Department of Corrections.

Robinson said the agreement does not require a county government to reimburse other counties for the cost of handling extra inmates. If the arrangements “become an extended period,” he said, the expenses would be compensated. The resolution calls for a payment of $52 for each day a detainee is housed by another county.

But the added cost of taking in theses inmates was “not significant” and consisted primarily of food expenses, Robinson said. Because Jasper County officers were guarding the additional holding cell, Beaufort County jail personnel were not required to work overtime.

“The incident that happened at Jasper was unfortunate and uncommon, but the movement of inmates or the sharing of resources is not uncommon at all,” Robinson told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. “Our detention centers and our counties work together. We support each other as necessary.”

Arthur Benjamin, director of the Jasper County Detention Center, could not be reached Monday for additional questions.

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