Six county jails in northeast Georgia are overflowing with inmates as state prisoners wait for beds to open up in state-run facilities.
The jails in Athens-Clarke, Barrow, Jackson, Oconee, Oglethorpe and Madison counties as of July 1 had 116 state prisoners taking up space that would otherwise belong to inmates awaiting trial in their respective counties.
The six jails have a total capacity of 646, but they are housing a total of 867 inmates, each at a cost of $35 to $40 per day.
The overcrowding can be attributed to the state's reluctance to move its prisoners from county jails to save money, said state Rep. Douglas C. Dean, D-Atlanta, who serves on the House's State Institutions and Properties Committee.
With not enough beds to go around, many inmates at the Clarke County Jail are sleeping on the floor inside hard plastic shells that are inverted plastic mattress platforms.
At the Jackson County Jail, built piecemeal from 1947 to the early 1960s, the overcrowding has forced the county to ship inmates to other facilities at a cost of about $35 per prisoner per day.
Oglethorpe County doesn't even have what could be called a jail. The small red brick structure located in the town of Lexington was built in the late 19th century and has eight beds. The sheriff's office uses it as a holding pen while arranging to relocate prisoners to facilities in other counties.
Although officials agree that county jails across Georgia are grossly overpopulated, but there are differing opinions about the solution.
Some northeast Georgia counties are planning to build or expand their jails to reduce overcrowding. Some officials say the state needs to build more prisons.
Others favor placing county inmates - especially those accused of low-grade misdemeanors - with diversion centers, work-release programs or releasing them on probation with monitoring devices.
State prisons, with 49,268 inmates, are at 99 percent of capacity, according to corrections department spokeswoman Scheree Lipscomb.
There are no plans to expand the state prison system, she said, although Corrections Commissioner James Donald is studying alternatives to incarceration. One idea is to assign people convicted of some nonviolent felonies to reporting centers, where they must check in on a daily basis.