The Butler County Prison Board on Tuesday, Oct. 20, voted to request an increase in the rates U.S. Marshals Service pays to house and transport federal inmates being held in Butler County Prison.

Board members said the increase is needed to cover an increase in the costs of housing inmates; and the costs incurred by the sheriff’s office for transporting those inmates to the federal courthouse in Pittsburgh and to the hospital for medical treatment.

The jail has an open-ended intergovernmental agreement with the marshals service to cover those costs, Warden Beau Sneddon said.

Currently, the marshals service pays the jail $84 per day to house each federal inmate and reimburses the sheriff’s office $35 per hour to transport those inmates.

Those rates were set the last time the agreement was updated several years ago, Sneddon said.

The actual housing cost last year, calculated based on the total inmate population, was determined to be $123.64 per day for each inmate, he said. The board authorized him to request a new rate of $144.01 to cover current costs.

As of Oct. 14, the jail had 386 inmates, including 222 federal inmates and six from other counties, according to board figures.

Sheriff Mike Slupe, chairman of the prison board, said his department is losing money under the $35 per hour reimbursement rate. He said deputies receive overtime pay when they have to stay with inmates who are admitted to the hospital.

From January through September, deputies guarded an inmate in the hospital on 156 days and guarded multiple inmates in the hospital on 54 of those days, Slupe said.

“So 156 out of 304 days, we’ve been sitting on somebody at the hospital,” Slupe said.

In September, the jail had at least one inmate in the hospital on 23 days, Sneddon said.

In other business, the board approved a one-year, $35,591 contract with JailTracker for prison management software, which is used to produce reports and track inmate commitments, releases and other information.

Sneddon also told the board corrections officer Alex Suber should be recognized for finding a shank in an inmate’s cell Oct. 6 during a routine cell search. He described the shank as an improvised edged weapon.

“This wasn’t a shakedown-type situation. This was just a routine cell search that our people have every single day,” Sneddon said.

Chief county detective Doug Brink said he anticipates filing charges in the incident soon.