SOMERSET, KY - Kentucky has one of the highest rates of state felons who are serving out their time in local jails, according to a report by a University of Kentucky professor.

More than 6,000 Kentucky state prisoners are housed in county jails, which are typically designed to hold inmates for a few weeks or months as they await trial or serve short sentences.

Thirty percent of Kentucky's 20,585 state felons - those sentenced to a year or more - are being held in county jails. That is four times the rate in neighboring Indiana, five times the national average and a higher percentage than any other state except Louisiana.

A report by University of Kentucky law professor Robert Lawson, who authored Kentucky's penal code, says jails generally are not equipped to provide the kind of rehabilitation that offer "anything more than a faint hope of helping inmates after incarceration,"

Jails, Lawson says in the report, "are more of a storage bin or human warehouse than a penal institution in pursuit of corrections."

But Lawson acknowledged that Kentucky is unlikely to abandon jails as a place for housing felons because jail space is cheaper than prison space.

In 2004-05 in Kentucky, the annual cost per inmate was $9,958 in jails vs. $17,198 a year in prisons.

Corrections officials dispute the report's conclusions, saying Lawson underestimates the value of keeping felons in jails closer to their homes and allowing them to perform community service for local governments, schools and parks.

The 71-page report, "Turning Jails into Prison - Collateral Damage from Kentucky's War on Crime," says the incarceration of long-term prisoners in county jails is the worst consequence of a prison boom in Kentucky, where the prison population has increased sevenfold since 1970.

Lawson and experts who have read the report, including Ernie Lewis, who heads the state public defender system, say the situation should prompt public concern because without rehabilitation and education, inmates held in jails are more likely to commit new crimes when released.

Kentucky Jailers Association president Joey Stanton and state Corrections Commissioner John Rees concede some jails are too small to house inmates long-term. But "the advantage is you are keeping them closer to their community and that they are not going deeper into the system," Rees said.

Stanton, Grayson County's jailer, said his jail offers classes in nutrition, parenting, smoking cessation, anger management and English as a second language.

Rees said about 60 percent of felons doing time in county jails are eligible to work outside them, picking up litter and sprucing up public areas.

Last year, they performed about 6.4 million hours of community service for local governments, schools and other organizations, work that would have cost about $33 million if paid for at minimum wage.

Jails have always housed a few felons waiting to be transported to state prisons. But in 1992, the General Assembly enacted a law requiring that offenders convicted of Class D felonies punishable by one to five years serve their time in jails. The law was amended in 2000 to allow some Class C felons to be housed in jails.

In his report, Lawson said counties have become addicted to the money the state provides for housing state inmates.

The state pays counties $31.50 per inmate per day - more than it generally costs to house them. In Northern Kentucky, the Boone County Jail houses 97 state inmates, Campbell County Jail 127, Kenton County Jail 67 and Grant County Jail 123, according to the state.