Bannock County jail over budget due to overcrowding

Overcrowding and over budget are two words that Bannock County Sheriff, Lorin Nielsen, is all too familiar with.

Nielsen met with county commissioners Tuesday morning for a budget meeting on the jail.

The jail’s budget is $750,000 more than in 2015. The sheriff said about $600,000 of that money is due to overcrowding issues.

Nielsen said one thing that put the jail over budget was the unexpected cost of bed rentals to house inmates at other jails in different counties.

Currently the Bannock County jail pays about $1,000 per day for bed rentals. Nielsen said $300,000 will be set aside in the budget just to cover the cost of renting beds from other jails.

Nielsen also said since they’re overcrowded, the jail can’t house inmates for other counties. That costs the county about $800,000 in lost revenue. Nielsen said he feels he’s exhausted every option available to fix the overcrowding issue and keep the budget down.

“We’ve got to find a long-term solution to this quick,” Nielsen said. “This kind of money from Bannock County being spent out to other counties to keep our constitutional obligation is not cost-effective.”

He said the only option he feels he has left to combat the issue is getting a jail expansion bond passed by the public.

Nielsen said he plans to meet with county commissioners in the next couple of weeks to decide how to move forward on the bond. He said they will look at all options with it, but he hopes to have some sort of bond back on the November ballot. He said expanding the jail and eliminating the need to pay to house inmates elsewhere would save the jail a huge amount of money. So Nielsen said he plans to keep working on the bond.