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| State, Sheriff's Office at Odds on Tenn. Jail-Prisoner Statistics |
| By Knoxville News-Sentinel |
| Published: 11/26/2002 |
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The Tennessee Department of Correction has confirmed its report that more than half of the prisoners in Knox County's overcrowded maximum-security jail last month were charged with misdemeanors. 'The county, the Sheriff's Department, gave it to us,' said Steve Hayes, a spokesman for the Department of Correction. Hayes' comment came after sheriff's officials said last week that the state's numbers were incorrect and that they don't send the state information about the specific populations at Knox County's three jail facilities. 'We have no idea of how they arrived at their determination about which inmates are in what facilities,' Chief Deputy Dwight Van de Vate wrote in a prepared statement. Van de Vate also wrote that as of Nov. 15, 198 of 213 prisoners in the downtown jail were either charged with or convicted of felonies. But after recently denying that it ever sent the information to the state, the sheriff's office released a statement November 20 stating it had sent what it called 'estimates' that were not 'verifiable numbers.' Those figures have been posted monthly on TDOC's Web site. 'The estimates on the web site ... ' should not have been sent to the state,' Martha Dooley, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's office wrote. The Department of Correction released records November 19 that show its Oct. 18 report - listing 130 of 226 prisoners in the jail as misdemeanor inmates - was based on information sent to it last month by the Sheriff's Office. And according to the Sheriff's Office report sent to the state last week, there were only 88, not 198, people with felony charges or convictions in the downtown jail on Nov. 15. That information, contained in documents signed by a Knox County Detention Center officer, and including a detention center telephone number, includes a breakdown of the population of each of the county's three jail facilities by prisoner charge or conviction. The Sheriff's Office sends such reports to the state monthly. Dooley said that Sheriff Tim Hutchison had previously ordered that the TDOC Jail Report no longer be used, but apparently a jail employee had begun using the old form. The state has been receiving the report monthly for at least two years. |
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