State's prisons full

Jackson County is not in a position to help Indiana Department of Correction officials who are scrambling to find ways to deal with more inmates with the same amount of space.

"They're not asking us about taking any more because they know we are pretty much at the limit," Sheriff Marc Lahrman said of the shortage of bed space at state prisons.

The Associated Press reported recently that Indiana is running so short on prison space that it has just 26 beds available for its worst offenders. Inmates are sleeping in beds stacked three high in one prison, and officials are considering renovating common areas such as gymnasiums into cells.

Jackson County has an unwritten agreement with the DOC that it will hold 35 inmates - 25 males and 10 females - sentenced to state prisons, Lahrman said.

"We're usually up around 49 or 50 and most are males because we don't have that many DOC females," Lahrman said. Most if not all DOC prisoners held at the jail in Brownstown were sentenced for crimes in Jackson County, he added.

"We sometimes hold a DOC prisoner from another county," Lahrman said.

"But they will just take them to another county that has some space freed up," Lahrman said. "They just shuffle them around."

Lahrman said holding DOC prisoners from other counties pays off because he sometimes asks another county to hold a problem prisoner or one that presents a security risk.

State officers came in Wednesday morning and took 10 DOC prisoners from the jail, leaving 40. The total inmate population at the 180-bed jail was 197. The extra prisoners are often double-bunked or placed in the holding area.

"Everyone is on a bunk," Lahrman said.

The state pays the county $35 a day to house DOC inmates, and the county received $572,335 from the state for doing so in 2008.

That money goes into the general fund to help pay for jail operations, which will cost about $902,000 budgeted in 2008.

Department of Correction leaders thought their prison crowding problem would be alleviated - at least a bit - when Gov. Mitch Daniels proposed expanding two prisons to add 1,200 beds, the AP reported. Daniels said it was a priority because Indiana's prisons are at about 99 percent of capacity.

But Democrats who control the Indiana House objected to Daniels' plans, and the Republican governor later dropped the idea as a political olive branch.

Now prison officials are back to square one, scrambling to find ways to deal with more inmates without more space.

"We're working all the time on it," said DOC spokesman Doug Garrison. "We're trying the best we can to maximize our occupancy with the facilities that we have."

The state's prison population of about 27,000 grows by about 4 percent a year, or about 1,000 inmates. Community correction programs and alternative sentencing options such as house arrest can help keep those who have committed minor crimes out of prisons.

Those aren't options, however, for inmates who have committed serious crimes or have a long criminal record.

The Daniels administration and DOC officials say it's too early to know exactly how the state will deal with the increasing number of prisoners. No specific solutions have been proposed, but some options are already off the table.

Daniels said earlier this year he doesn't want to let inmates out early as other states have done. Daniels' budget director, Chris Ruhl, said early release is still not an option for Indiana.

Garrison said Indiana also isn't considering sending prisoners out of state or taking prisoners from other states to raise money. The first requires cash the DOC doesn't have, while the second would use space the state can't afford to give up. Space at the privately run New Castle Correctional Facility that once held inmates from Arizona is now full of Indiana prisoners.

Some advocacy groups fear that states struggling with crowded prisons and little cash will increasingly turn to private facilities, which some consider less accountable than state-run prisons.

But private facilities charge per inmate per day, and Garrison said those fees aren't looking very "fiscally appealing" as state revenue collections have fallen millions of dollars short of expectations.

He said prison officials instead may consider changing parole programs so that those breaking parole on "technical" violations - not those who commit another crime - could avoid landing back in prison. If a person on parole fails a drug test, for example, the DOC could order more frequent testing instead of sending that person back to jail, Garrison said.

The department also could turn space such as gymnasiums or other rooms at prisons into housing units and increase the number of inmates bunked in a cell.

"We don't have a choice," said Amanda Copeland, director of the DOC's Planning and Research Division. "We have to find a solution."

Crystal Garcia, an associate professor of criminal justice at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, suggested that the state examine whether all maximum-security prisoners really belong in that classification.

"Are they figuring that too many of these people are maximum security, or is it that they're all rapists and murderers?" she asked.
Garrison said the department continually reviews its classification process.

"We're not out there trying to load up our maximum-security prisons," he said. "We do it because their crime and their behavior warrant it."

Maximum security prisoners make up the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, but low- and medium-security prisons are also nearly full, Garrison said.

Any solutions now will likely be short term. Daniels says that when he first took office in 2005, he was told he would need to build more prisons soon. "Unless a prison magically drops down from the sky, we're going to have to find a way to get it," Garrison said.
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The Associated Press contributed to this story.