Monroe County jail notebook: Population goes down slightly for flat 18-day trend
Monroe County’s jail population stood at 247 on both July 21 and Aug. 7, but 149 people left during the 18-day span, showing substantial turnover. Meanwhile, 8 prisoners have been transferred to Brown County as the sheriff tries to respond to overcrowded condions.
The Monroe County jail held 247 people on July 21. Seventeen days later, on Aug. 7, it again held 247 people.
That consistency does not capture the substantial movement through the jail. During the 18-days from July 21 through Aug. 7, 149 people left the jail. Their median length of stay was 4 days.
Of the 247 people who were in the jail on July 21, 192 were still there on Aug. 7. That means 55 people who were in jail on July 21 population had left by Aug. 7. Numerically, they were replaced by 55 people who arrived after July 21 and were still incarcerated on Aug. 7.
The difference between the 55 and the 149 reflects the jail’s turnover: The bigger number also includes people who arrived after July 21 and then left again before Aug. 7.
Daily population counts also fluctuated. The jail population climbed as high as 264 on July 31, then fell to 248 the next day. It reached a low of 241 on Aug. 4 before climbing back to 247 by Aug. 7. Over the 18 days, the average population was about 251.
Monroe County also continued this week to move some prisoners out of its jail as part of its response to overcrowding. The current population is still well above either of the two numbers that have been cited recently as the facility’s functional capacity—186 by the sheriff or 229 by the ACLU.
Chief deputy sheriff Phil Parker said Thursday that two more Monroe County prisoners had been transported to the Brown County jail. One was being held for the Indiana Department of Correction and one being held on a parole violation.
That follows the transfer of six IDOC-related prisoners reported last week. Parker said three of those six had already received prison sentences and were waiting for IDOC to find beds and transport them. The other three were being held on IDOC parole violations. That’s people previously released on parole whose parole officers had determined they should be returned to prison.
With Thursday’s transfers, eight Monroe County prisoners have now been moved to Brown County under that effort. Brown and Monroe counties have a memorandum of understanding allowing Brown County to house Monroe County prisoners. Parker has said the Brown County sheriff, Brad Stogsdill, has indicated his jail could accommodate roughly 20 to 25 Monroe County prisoners, depending on its own population.
The transfers represent the early stages of a strategy that surfaced after Monroe County commissioners declared an “emergency” over jail crowding, a procedural step intended to allow the sheriff to move as many as 100 prisoners elsewhere.
The day after action by commissioners, the ACLU of Indiana filed a new federal lawsuit on behalf of two inmates alleging unconstitutional conditions at the jail. [Monroe County Jail Timeline]
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