BEAUMONT, Texas — The Jefferson County Jail will be spending an extra $4 million dollars to keep the jail up and running.
The reasons for this are inflation and COVID according to Jefferson County Sheriff Zena Stephens.
The jail currently houses around 1,000 inmates which is more than before the pandemic.
The jail's budget for the last fiscal year was $39 million. The next fiscal year it was raised to $43 million.
COVID has led to a delay in the courts which means there are more inmates in jail. This leads to there being more mouths to feed and not enough correctional officers to work.
"Those are things that you can't bargain with," said Stephens.
It costs more money to operate the Jefferson County Jail now. The biggest factors for the increased budget are food and medical services.
"Our jail has about 1,000 inmates and so the increases are due to their medical costs, their food costs, and clothing. Those are things we didn't expect four years ago. They have continued to increase because of inflation and COVID," said Stephens.
The year-to-year breakdown of what the extra $4 million will be spent on looks like this:
- $600,000 more for food costs.
- $2 million more for medical.
- Corrections officers will see a 3% raise.
- $200,000 more set aside for law enforcement staff
Commissioners might have to be creative to pay for everything.
"The airport. We reduced some of the airport funding because we were able to use some CARES Act funding. Or we'd look towards some of our capital funding. We'll come back to court with our recommendations on where we need to make cuts or what we think the tax rate should be," said County Auditor Patrick Swayne.
Sheriff Stephens is wanting to hire 30 more officers. That is already included in the budget.
"Right now our correctional officers are on 48-hour work weeks. I can hire people with a temporary correctional license but when that one year is up they've got to get some training and get their permanent at day 365 if they don't have that I have to let them go," said Stephens.
County commissioners have already approved all of the funding for the new expenses.
In the future, they may need additional money for jail infrastructure, and there's even talk of whether the county needs a new jail.