LOGAN – Leif Bickel, the Hocking County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy of Corrections, penned a letter to the commissioners this week asking for a $300,000 supplement to the office budget for housing inmates.
Currently, with an all-female jail in the county still under construction, inmates are sent to the Southeast Ohio Regional Jail (SEORJ) in Nelsonville, as well as the Fairfield County Jail.
Bickel cited the monthly cost for this service at a roughly $151,000 average over the last three months, a number that he says has increased since he joined the office in 2021.
"Actually, in August, we had more inmates (at the SEORJ) than Athens County, which is typically the most of the five counties it serves," Bickel told the Logan Daily News. He said that in recent months, there was a point when nearly one-third of inmates were from Hocking County.
The cost, he went on, is not simply for room and board, but can also include medical expenses.
One reason Bickel cited for the increased cost is the number of inmates from Hocking County increasing: from the high thirties to mid forties when he began, to the fifties and as high as 60 this year.
A second factor, though, he identifies as the amount of time inmates are spending in the jail: 93 days on average, also a demonstrable increase over recent years.
In conversation with the Logan Daily, Bickel declined to speculate on any reasons for the increases, but in Thursday's meeting, Commissioner Sandy Ogle pointed to possible staffing issues at the prosecutor's office, leading to slower case resolutions and longer waits in jail for criminal defendants.
"We're competing with private practice (in the prosecutor's office)," she said, speculating there may need to be an increase in salaries.
Hocking County Prosecuting Attorney Jennifer Graham did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
The additional $300,000 was approved by the commission, but Commissioner Michael Linton called it a “crisis,” adding that "we need to get that house in order.”
One potential solution in the future may be the construction of a new jail on the site of the former correctional facility in Ward Township, which has already been razed and is under new construction.
"The hope and intent is… to have it open sometime next year," Bickel reported. Regarding the project, he said the hope is that it will be able to work in conjunction with the municipal drug court "to help women get out of the cycle of addiction."
He called it a "holistic approach where just housing prisoners doesn't work," with vocational tools and resources to "integrate (inmates) back into the community… a new model of rehabilitation."
In the commissioner's meeting, Linton remarked on the slow pace of the jail project, referring to its tight budgetary restrictions. Once it opens, though, he predicted it could potentially be "revenue neutral or positive" for the county.
Elsewhere in the meeting Thursday, county IT Director Mark Stout addressed some of the issues that the commissioners have had with their Facebook feed, which has left residents unable to access the meetings remotely.
The "software is not terminating the live stream properly," he said, leading to complications where videos will read as occurring live for several days afterward.
Audio recordings have since been posted on the commissioners' Facebook page for the meetings that are inaccessible; as of Thursday afternoon, the live stream for the morning meeting appears to be up and functional.
Email at rmorris@logandaily.com
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