Monroe County sheriff notifies officials of jail population spike, seeks $30K for overflow facilities
On Monday, Jan. 22, the Monroe County jail population hit a peak of 275, when there were only 239 secure beds available.
That’s according to an email message sent to several county officials the following day, by Monroe County sheriff Ruben Marté.
Before the spike, the population had been hovering around 200.
Receiving the email message were county councilors, county commissioners, and circuit court judges, among others.
The big jail population number has implications under the terms of the settlement agreement reached in 2009 in a lawsuit filed about crowded conditions at the Monroe County jail, on constitutional grounds.
Under the terms of the settlement agreement, when a cap of 248 inmates is hit, certain “reasonable steps” have to be taken, to lower the population.
One of the “reasonable steps” that Marté wants to take is transfer inmates to other Indiana facilities for housing on a per diem basis. But the amount in the 2024 budget for “Inmate Off-Site Housing” is just $3,000.
Marté wants to pay for housing inmates at other Indiana jails whenever the population requiring “security beds” is above 215. And that, he thinks, will require $30,000.
In his Tuesday email message, the sheriff’s request of the county council was for an extra $30,0000 appropriation. The county council is the fiscal body for county government.
At the county council’s regular Tuesday meeting, Marté’s email message got a quick mention from chief deputy sheriff Phil Parker—after Parker had helped give a presentation on the status of the jail’s commissary account. But it did not get any discussion at the meeting. Councilors had received the message just two and a half hours earlier.
After Tuesday’s meeting, county council president Trent Deckard responded to a B Square question about prospects of an extra $30,000 appropriation. Deckard indicated that the council would work through its two liaisons to the sheriff’s office—Kate Wiltz and Marty Hawk—to try to identify ways to do an internal transfer in the sheriff’s office, to free up the needed money.
Deckard said that less than a month into the year, after the budget had just been set, was too early to think of an extra appropriation as the first way to solve the problem.
As far as the sheriff’s basic approach of sending the notification with a specific request, Deckard said, “You’re seeing the sheriff leading. And I appreciate this.”
Deckard continued by saying the sheriff had, in his email message, laid out precisely how he is analyzing the problem and how he is making decisions.
Wiltz confirmed that she and Hawk would tell the sheriff to look first for ways to transfer funds, before they would resort to an extra appropriation. Wiltz said she’d called Marté as soon as she received the email message. Wiltz said she would likely ask the county council’s administrator, Kim Shell, to assist with finding the needed $30,000.
The spike in population numbers will likely not have come as a complete surprise to county councilors. They were briefed by chief deputy Parker at their Jan. 9 meeting on the improvements that have been made to jail conditions since Marté took office at the start of last year.
Parker said on Jan. 9: “Our jail population is starting to move up here. We’re sitting at 250 today—which is as high as it’s been since we’ve been there.” Parker spoke of “the ebb and the flow of it.”
But on Jan. 9 it was mostly a good news night for the sheriff’s office. Jail commander Kyle Gibbons responded to a question from councilor Peter Iversen by saying the jail was now fully staffed. Full staffing had been “a long time coming,” Gibbons said. Gibbons told the council that the pay increase given to the guards at the beginning of the year is a key factor in retaining them.
After that Jan. 9 report, in the following two weeks, the number of inmates swelled from 250 to 275.
Marté’s email message chronicled the recent impacts of the crowded conditions, which included fights between inmates: “Just this past weekend, our staff responded to six (6) altercations between inmates which resulted in serious injuries, including hospitalization for three (3) of them. The injuries included a fractured jaw/dislodged teeth, fractured orbital/concussion and a fractured hand.”
The settlement agreement to which Marté’s email refers, spells out what counts as too crowded. As quoted in a 2021 report from a consultant, who was hired by the county government, the agreement reads in part:
[I]n the event that the population for the security beds exceeds 248 for more than twenty-four (24) hours or on more than three (3) occasions in one week, even if each or any occasion is less than twenty-four (24) hours in duration, the defendants agree that they shall take all reasonable steps to lower the population at the earliest reasonable opportunity.
In his email message, Marté lays out how the raw number of secure beds does not necessarily reflect the number of beds that are available for all possible inmates.
As one example, at-risk and predatory inmates are segregated into separate housing, the email states, which means that they are not commingled in the general population. That practice has had the effect of lowering the available secure beds in the jail.
