Woodbury County Sheriff Chad Sheehan is helping pay for the new county jail by taking in more federal prisoners.
Sheehan is asking the county supervisors for funds to hire eight more officers to help handle and transport the federal prisoners from North Dakota. “We’re certainly ready to start bringing North Dakota inmates from the Marshals here, but part of that is going to be a strain specifically on transporting because there are times that we may have to meet them halfway. There may be even some exigent times where we would have to go all the way back and forth to Fargo,” Sheehan says.
The Sheriff says the newly opened Law Enforcement Center now has them working on two different floors and more staff would help with that. “We’re basically operating almost as two separate areas. You work in booking an intake, you’re working long term, and this would just give us the opportunity to add a little bit of staff to that,” he says.
Sheehan says it will cost $650,000 to hire the new staff and that would be paid for with revenue from taking care of 18 federal inmates from North Dakota. Sheehan expects to hold some 40 federal inmates from North Dakota and they would generate nearly $1.5 million.
He says additional staff would allow them to handle more than 100 federal inmates various states. “We’re prepared to handle 125 to 150 with this, I think we all would be more confident in that 150 number. Without this, it’s probably staying closer to that 125,” Sheehan says. The additional revenue from holding the federal inmates would be used to pay down the new law enforcement center. Sheehan says they are not expecting to be holding inmates arrested by ICE as illegal immigrants.
(By Woody Gottburg, KSCJ, Sioux City)