Montgomery County pays other counties to house inmates

Montgomery County pays a county jail in Beaumont almost $1,200 a day to hold 26 inmates sent there in November.

The county approved a similar inmate transfer agreement with San Jacinto County last summer and is currently in talks with Walker County for another such deal.

The reason for the deals is that Montgomery’s nearly three-decade-old county jail is still uncomfortably close to crossing its 1,253-inmate capacity, two years after the county sold off a separate detention center built for a growing population. Last year, the state reprimanded the county for almost violating jail overcrowding laws.

Until the county finds a way to expand or build another jail, which could cost upwards of $200 million, agreements like the one with the Jefferson County jail in Beaumont will be the norm, said Captain David Moore of the Montgomery County sheriff’s office, who runs the jail.

“We’re gonna have to rely on them,” he said.

While inmate transfer agreements are common in Texas, Chambers is the only other Houston-area county that houses inmates in another county’s jail, according to data from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards dated Jan. 1. But that agreement only involves five inmates.

Montgomery isn’t the only county that has struggled with jail capacity issues.

Harris County has for years struggled with overcrowding. Fort Bend County was paying some $20,000 per day to house about 400 inmates in other counties across the state in 2009 because of its limited jail capacity, said Lt. Daniel Quam of the Fort Bend County sheriff’s office. Fort Bend expanded its jail by more than 1,000 beds that year, but its inmate population then dropped to around 800 because of a greater emphasis on parole and probation, more focus on inmates with mental health issues and a consolidation of legal buildings.

Montgomery County’s agreements have so far cost the county upwards of $65,000, Moore said.

He attributed the rising inmate population to regional growth. Anticipating the need for more jail space, the county in 2008 built the Joe Corley Detention Center for $45 million. While the 1,500-bed facility was planned to someday handle jail overflow, the inmate population didn’t rise quickly enough, prompting the county to sell it to a private company in May 2013, Doyal said.

Doyal, who moved up to county judge from county commissioner this month, said another factor behind the sale was an Internal Revenue Service deadline that could have cost the county the tax-exempt status on the bonds used to build the center.

A county grand jury cited “ethical violations, mismanagement and lack of financial oversight” in the construction of the detention facility and a mental health treatment complex. But it did not find criminal violations, in part because a two-year statute of limitations on criminal charges such as conflict of interest had expired.

The county attorney last year demanded that two former county officials and the center’s developer reimburse Montgomery for millions in alleged overcharges on a jail and the mental health facility, but the Commissioners Court, fearing a defamation suit from the two ex-officials, agreed last year to pay them a total of $50,000.

Florida-based Geo Group Inc. bought the detention center to house undocumented immigrants. Doyal previously pointed out that the county earned a $20 million profit from selling the center to Geo for $65 million. At the same time, Geo pays the county an additional $250,000 per year in taxes for the center and $500,000 for managing its federal prisoner contracts.

But not having that extra space has been a problem for the county, which drew state scrutiny early last year when the jail was found to be holding too many minimum-security female inmates one weekend – prompting the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to designate the jail “at risk” of violating jail overcrowding laws.From April to November, the state commission kept a close eye on the Montgomery County jail population: if it went above its total capacity, the jail would be “decertified” by the state, meaning the county would have to submit a corrective action plan and take steps to fix the deficiencies, said Brandon Wood, the executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

A jail that’s been decertified increases its exposure to potential lawsuits, though the state doesn’t carry any official financial penalties, Wood said.

He said overcrowding typically leads to health and safety issues: too many inmates in one area can “tax” the sanitation system or create potentially unsafe ratios of inmates to prison guards. He said most county jails in Texas stay below their capacity.

In addition to the inmate transfer agreements, Montgomery County has tried to keep its jail population down by utilizing mental health programs and working with the district attorney and judges to reduce jail time where appropriate.

The most recent transfer to the Beaumont jail happened when a wall in a section housing some 100 inmates had a crack in it, creating a safety issue, Moore said. Initially all inmates were sent to the Jefferson County jail in Beaumont, but then some were brought back as the crack was fixed. That left 26 in the Beaumont jail.

“I just went ahead and left them there,” Moore said. “Keeps my count down, let them stay there.”

Montgomery County is exploring jail expansion, which officials agree is necessary. It would cost roughly $200 million to expand the jail and double the number of beds; a plan to build a new jail on a 30-acre site would cost about the same amount, not including the land cost.

The county is studying how much the jail population might grow over time.

Doyal said the “sticker shock” from the two proposals is prompting the county to revisit its options.

“We just need to do a little bit more investigation,” he said.