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| Inmates May Be Released If Work Center Closes |
| By Tampa Tribune |
| Published: 05/19/2003 |
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About 170 minimum-security Hillsborough County, Fla., inmates could soon be released and serve out their sentences while being electronically monitored at home. Plans to close the county sheriff's office Work Release Center, across the street from the Orient Road Jail, likely will be set in motion next week, sheriff's Col. David Parrish said. The measure would be temporary, and the center likely will reopen in October. Parrish said severe overcrowding at county jails - 1,000 inmates too many as of Thursday - has put the sheriff's office in a budget crisis. Detention deputies must be paid overtime to supervise, feed and care for the additional inmates. And the department has used 110 percent of its $1.7 million overtime budget for 2003. "We are so crowded that we've got to do something,'' Parrish said. "We're out of money, and we can't spend money we don't have.'' The solution, Parrish said, is to close the center and let the inmates serve out the rest of their sentences through electronic monitoring. The detention deputies who work there would then be free to help supervise inmates in other parts of the jail system, lowering overtime costs. Parrish said the center operates like a halfway house. The inmates are incarcerated nights and weekends but are permitted to leave on weekdays to work. They are serving sentences of less than one year for misdemeanor and felony offenses, such as writing bad checks and burglary, Parrish said. "These are not sexual or violent offenders,'' sheriff's Col. Joe Docobo said. "These are extremely low-risk inmates who are already out in the community every day going to work.'' The inmates would be required to hold jobs, Parrish said, but they also would wear electronic monitoring devices on their ankles that would enable the sheriff's office to ensure they return home immediately after work. The inmates also would be monitored through random visits to their homes and phone calls to their employers, Parrish said. He said the sheriff's office has about 170 inmates on house arrest, and the release of the additional inmates would double that number. He said Sheriff Cal Henderson has approved the plan, and the center likely will close Thursday. Deputies who work there would be moved to the Falkenburg Road Jail and help staff there open more than 1,000 new beds this month. "We need those detention deputies to guard the inmates that truly need [to be] guarded and that can't be released on electronic monitoring,'' Parrish said. The center likely will reopen in October at the start of the county's new fiscal year. |
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