Butler County officials are puzzling over what to do with a county jail that was built 10 years ago by officials who then were concerned that the number of people being jailed would continue to rise unabated. But the county now has fewer inmates than previous projections, leaving a large portion of the jail unoccupied.

“We have this very large prison that costs us in lighting, heating and maintaining,” said Leslie Osche, county commissioner chairman.

Osche is on the prison board with the two other county commissioners, Kim Geyer and Kevin Boozel; Judge Timothy McCune; and prison officials including Warden Joe DeMore.

The jail, which was built in 2009, can hold 512 people and, this year, it has a $12 million budget. By state law, county jails can only hold inmates who have been sentenced to a maximum incarceration of two years.

At last count on Dec. 12, there were 256 inmates distributed in what are known as pods, enclosed areas that hold about 63 people spread across two floors, Each cell has two bunks, a toilet and a corner table, with a slit of a window near the ceiling.

There are a total of nine pods, six of which are being used.

“We have this unused space — and so we're asking what can we do with it,” Osche said.

Part of the answer is to accept out-of-county inmates. For each inmate, Butler County receives $60 a day paid by other counties to house their inmates.

This year, out-of-county inmates are expected to add $1,051,200 to the county's general fund, according to the county's budget.

“They have a need. We have the space,” Osche said.

Out-of-county inmates

The idea to house out-of-county inmates isn't new. In 2011, the jail had a total of 337 inmates, with 27 state inmates.

In the previous month, the county requested that the state allot a total of 200 inmates to Butler.

“They overbuilt (the jail), so that we could house out-of-county prisoners,” Boozel said.

The jail on Washington Street was constructed to alleviate the overcrowding. In 2001, the then county commissioners began entertaining the idea of building a new jail.

The old jail, located on Vogeley Way where the county government center extension is today, was built in 1952. In its original design, it was meant to hold 45 prisoners.

By the end of its use, there were 139 inmates there. Another 46 were in a temporary prison annex in the city tier garage.

There were 53 full-time guards and 16 part-timers employed by the county.

Butler County also housed 85 inmates in other county prisons. The county spent $1.25 million on out-of-county inmate housing in 2006.

Construction of the current jail had been scheduled to be completed by 2007, but several setbacks, including a contracting dispute that led to a lawsuit, pushed the actual completion date back to 2009 at a cost of more than $42 million, according to previous reports.

Once the jail was operational, such issues as malfunctioning doors and toilets persisted into 2010.

Bucking the trend

Low local inmate numbers are a good thing, according to both county and jail officials.

With criminal justice reform gaining bipartisan support in Congress and the White House, reformers and policymakers are noting that most county jails are locking up more people, contributing to a rise in the nation's mass incarceration rate. According to the Vera Institute of Justice, an advocacy organization, about 75 percent of people in jail across the nation are being held for nonviolent traffic, property, drug or public order cases.

Butler County is bucking the national trend.

“It's not really in our best interest to jail nonviolent criminals,” Boozel said.

Doing so, he said, incurs huge costs for families and communities through lost income, parents separated from their children, untreated mental health and substance abuse problems and, ultimately, wasted taxpayer dollars through jailing that person.

He noted that part of the county's solution in reducing the jail's population was through the use of what Butler calls “specialty courts.”

In the county, there are three of these types of courts that are designed to work with people who are in trouble with the law, but willing to engage in a rigorous process to improve themselves.

One such court, Behavioral Health Court, focuses on defendants who have significant mental health issues that are the primary reason they were in trouble in the first place. Instead of being jailed immediately, they are given treatment and tools for rehabilitation and readjustment.

Participants generally are referred by members of the legal community, including district judges and attorneys. But anybody can make a referral.

A treatment team includes a group of specialists, such as a probation officer, to help design a personalized program for a defendant.

If a defendant succeeds, he would be offered a reduction in sentence. If he fails the program, he goes back into the traditional court system.

Even those in jail are given opportunities to prepare for their release through such initiatives as GED education programs.

“We're teaching so many classes that we have to use these extra pods for the classes. It's awesome,” said Beau Sneddon, the deputy warden of operations for Butler Country Prison.

“If we don't do things like this, it's trouble on the horizon,” Boozel said, explaining that inmates are more likely to become repeat offenders if they don't have something to fall back on once they are released.

And while officials hope to raise the number of out-of-county inmates, Boozel said he doesn't want the jail to reach maximum capacity.

There are benefits, he said, to using the extra space for classrooms, mental health programs and even moving inmates for pod maintenance.

“Do you really want more prisoners? With that comes liabilities,” Boozel said.