Bill said to increase amount charged for housing inmates going through legislature
LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – A bill that would affect the amount counties could charge municipalities for housing city inmates is going through the legislature.
According to Lowndes County Sheriff Eddie Hawkins, the current amount they can charge is $25 a day per inmate.
However, Hawkins says when you figure in meals, medical costs, and related expenses, it costs the county $79 a day to house an inmate.
In short, the county is losing money every day housing city inmates.
Senate Bill 2432 would allow counties to increase the amount they charge to recoup some of the costs.
Hawkins says the bill has created some controversy – counties are pushing to increase it, municipalities are pushing to keep it the same.
The legislation also prompts the question: When does a city prisoner become a county prisoner? When they’re indicted, or when the case is bound over to the grand jury?
This is causing some cases to stall, leaving inmates to sit in jail for a while before their case is presented to the grand jury, and leaving the county incurring the expense.
Hawkins says the bill has to come out of committee by tomorrow to go to the floor for a vote.
“That cost factor needs to be worked out between the cities and counties so that we can have an agreement on how much we can charge the cities for housing city inmates…Best-case scenario, it comes through the committee and goes to the floor for a vote. Then we can get the legislatures to vote on it to pass an increase that we can raise the price up and start accounting for some of this money that the county is losing,” said Sheriff Hawkins.
Hawkins encourages citizens to call their representatives to push this through the committee and get it to the floor for a vote.
Hawkins says when he first took over as sheriff, the city and county had an agreement of an MOU which increased the expense over a 3 year period up to$45.
The MOU was presented to the Attorney General’s Office and approved. Later on, the Attorney General came out with an opinion saying counties could only charge $25 a day to house an inmate. This caused the county to have to revert back to charging $25 a day to house an inmate.
