By Wiley Hayes
Carroll County Times
WESTMINSTER, Md. — Carroll will continue paying to have inmates housed in other jurisdictions to alleviate overcrowding at the local detention center, but law enforcement and county officials agree that constructing a second facility is a better long-term solution.
Warden George Hardinger is proposing a minimum security facility that would complement the maximum security Carroll County Detention Center in Westminster. In addition to providing more space, a minimum security facility would allow the county to update its correctional model to include a wide variety of treatment programs designed to move people closer to their eventual release, he said.
“It’s very hard to do that with what we have right now,” Hardinger said. “So it’s in part about additional beds, but it’s equally about getting into the 21st century with our correctional services we provide in a cost-effective manner.”
Hardinger said there is an encouraging trend in the criminal justice and corrections systems of identifying those inmates who are better suited in jail and those who are not.
“That’s where a minimum [security] facility comes into play,” he said. “It addresses treatment needs so in the long-term these people will spin out of the criminal justice system. We are behind the times.”
Commissioner Stephen Wantz, R-District 1, said inmate rehabilitation was a topic at last week’s Maryland Association of Counties Summer Conference, which the commissioners and county staff attended.
“There are great things happening in other jurisdictions,” Wantz said. “They are really doing things — and no pun intended — outside of the cell, if you will, to deal with the overpopulation and to get those identified not as hard-core folks back into mainstream life.”
Carroll County Sheriff Jim DeWees said the maximum security detention center is not adequate for treating and re-integrating lower-risk inmates back into society.
“It just isn’t built for that,” he said.
Hardinger said he is recommending a minimum security facility capable of housing 100. When planning such a facility, it is ideal to have a capacity that will not reach its limit within the first year, he said.
“Right now, we would have about 60 folks,” Hardinger said.
Until such a facility could be built, inmates will likely continue to be sent to other jurisdictions, unless the detention center’s numbers dip.
On Thursday, the Carroll County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a transfer of $60,750 from the county’s reserve for contingencies to the Carroll County Detention Center’s budget in order to house 15 inmates at the Allegany County Detention Center.
“I realize this is helping, but an additional facility in Carroll would be the best option,” said Commissioner Dennis Frazier, R-District 3.
DeWees, whose department oversees the jail, said the number of inmates — currently at 216 — fluctuates daily and the number of inmates housed off-site might change.
The Carroll County Detention Center was designed to house 185. As of Thursday, there were eight inmates — six men and two women — being housed off-site. The additional funding approved Thursday — to be used in the first quarter of fiscal year 2016 through Oct. 1 — will continue to pay for these eight to be housed in Allegany and give the jail the ability to send seven others, if necessary.
“We believe we can manage with 15 even though the original request in October was for 20,” DeWees said at Thursday’s meeting. “This gives us an awful lot of flexibility.”
Hardinger first requested additional funding for the off-site housing of inmates in October, and the commissioners transferred $246,000 from their reserves. From Oct. 29 to July 8, the county incurred $181,890 in off-site housing costs.
The cost per inmate is $45 per day in Allegany County. It costs Carroll about $65 per day to house an inmate at the detention center, Hardinger said. Though it might seem cheaper to continue to house inmates off-site, it would not be prudent to continue this practice, he said.
“We can’t be assured that this will always be available,” Hardinger said in a phone interview Friday. “Just because Allegany can do it now doesn’t mean they will continue to be able to do it.”
Maximum security and home detention
The Carroll County Detention Center is a maximum security jail, like all local detention centers in Maryland, according to Hardinger.
“We aren’t unique,” he said in a separate interview after Thursday’s meeting. “We have to house any person that commits a crime in our jurisdictions. We always have to think about what level of criminal we might have and for that reason we go with a higher security, but it’s not like every inmate is a maximum security inmate.”
Determining whether an inmate is suited for a minimum security facility is largely behavioral based, Hardinger said, but some inmates, such as those charged with murder, would remain in maximum.
“We generally try to start [an inmate] off on medium security and let them work their way up or down,” he said. “If you are a problem you will work your way to maximum. If you follow the rules, you will remain in medium but could work down toward minimum and home detention.”
Commissioner Richard Rothschild, R-District 4, asked at Thursday’s meeting if it was possible to increase the number of inmates participating in home detention.
“We already have,” DeWees said. “To say it’s an option to addressing the number of inmates we have is not a viable option to delaying the construction of a minimum security facility. This is the only way to combat the quality-of-life issues going on in the county.”
Hardinger said there are several situations in which an inmate can be considered for home detention: when the inmate is awaiting trial and is in pretrial supervision; when the inmate has been sentenced and is being phased through to home detention; and in rare cases, when a court might order an inmate to be placed in home detention or law enforcement might recommend an inmate be moved to home detention rather than serve a short sentence.
The detention center currently oversees 12 to 15 inmates on home detention, Hardinger said, but this number varies.
“We are seeing this number edge up a bit,” Hardinger said. “When we first launched this, we thought we would have more eligible candidates and the courts would utilize this more. We thought this [number] would be more in the 20s but we’ve never gotten there.”
Funding a new facility
A secondary, minimum security jail isn’t a new idea to Carroll.
Ted Zaleski, director of the county’s Department of Management and Budget, said that in recent years, the county had looked at possibly building a minimum security facility — and even included it in the five-year capital plan — but was forced to abandon it due to the 2008 recession. The facility was conceptualized but never designed, he said.
“This is not just a thing about finding the funding for the capital side, but also the operations, which we planned to be about $1.5 million a year,” Zaleski said, though he noted that the numbers are several years old and would need to be revisited.
Commissioner Doug Howard, R-District 5, said the need for a minimum security facility is just one of several large-scale projects requested of the commissioners.
“We have some long-term needs, all of which are big things beyond the scope of the resources we have available today,” Howard said. “What I’d like to see in the upcoming [fiscal year 2017] budget is to take some steps forward in long-term planning. This, to me, seems like one of those areas.”
The commissioners completed the FY16 budget in late May and won’t begin discussing the FY17 budget until March 2016.
DeWees said the state offers funding for these projects but is unlikely to commit unless Carroll identifies its own funding for the minimum security facility.
County Administrator Roberta Windham said the state offers up to 50 percent of the project’s cost, but Zaleski cautioned the commissioners and said the state can participate but doesn’t have to.
“They do have the funding but it’s a limited pot,” Zaleski said.
DeWees said that after speaking with counterparts across the state, there is no other construction like a minimum security facility taking place, a situation that could make it more likely that the state would assist Carroll in the endeavor.
Howard said he would like to identify funding in FY17 for the architectural design of a minimum security facility.
“This is another example where the county’s objectives are lining up with the state’s and this is an opportunity to move the ball forward,” he said. “We’d be remiss to miss this opportunity for funding. Once we have a real design and plan, it’s easier to actually do it.”
How much longer can we wait?
Commissioner Richard Weaver, R-District 2, asked how long the detention center can continue to operate over-capacity.
Over the past seven to eight months, the number of inmates at the detention center has gone down, DeWees said, leading him to believe they can sustain operations for the indefinite future, but “the sooner the better.”
“We will do what we have to do. With the flexibility of off-site housing, we can do this,” DeWees said. “We’d like to see [the minimum security facility] built tomorrow, but I understand what it takes to design and construct.”
If the commissioners were to fund the final planning and design of the facility in FY17, and the county was able to acquire state funding, Hardinger said he expects it to be four years before the doors on a minimum security facility open.
“This tells me I have to hold the line no matter what,” he said.