County jail cuts 35 beds, 10 employees.Byline: BILL BISHOP The Register-Guard The Lane County Jail will have 35 fewer beds and 10 fewer full-time deputies beginning Saturday. It's the first public safety program cut stemming from a county budget shortfall Shortfall The amount by which the capital required to fulfill a financial obligation exceeds available capital. Notes: Shortfall risk is often combated with an efficient hedging strategy created by a fund, group, institution, or individual. brought on by increasing Public Employee Retirement System payments and higher employee health care costs. The 35-bed closure, which leaves the county with 661 beds at the jail, work-release center and Forest Work Camp, will save about $260,000 over the next six months, Jail manager John Clague said Tuesday. Lane County Sheriff Jan Clements said he ordered the cut now to avoid deeper cuts later. The corrections agency has 254 full-time employees and an annual budget of $24.8 million. Over the next two years, the Years, The the seven decades of Eleanor Pargiter’s life. [Br. Lit.: Benét, 1109] See : Time budget shortfall could total $672,000, he said. The closure is only the first in a long list of budget cuts expected to affect police, corrections and public safety programs in the next six months, officials said. Down the road, an additional 80 beds may be cut as further details of county and state budget shortfalls take shape, Clague said. The depth of cuts depends on the outcome of a Jan. 28 election on an income tax increase; legislative cuts in state funding for local court, police, corrections and social service programs; and the county's general fund shortfall from PERS a. 1. Light blue; grayish blue; - a term applied to different shades at different periods. and health care costs in the fiscal year beginning July 1, Clague said. The public probably will notice little difference after the 35-bed closure, Clague said. Jail data indicates the closure will require an additional 500 inmates to be released annually without supervision or without conditions on their conduct in order to control overcrowding overcrowding overcrowding of animal accommodation. Many countries now publish codes of practice which define what the appropriate volumetric allowances should be for each species of animal when they are housed indoors. Breaches of these codes is overcrowding. . In 2002, about 4,000 inmates were released without supervision or conditions. But, behind the scenes, the closure signals the beginning of efforts by police and jail managers to decide beforehand who should go to jail instead of determining after an arrest who should be released due to overcrowding, Clague said. Clements said he is working with other police and social service agencies to minimize the impact of jail cuts on their agencies and on the public safety system as a whole. In the past, Clement's by-the-book approach had him allocating jail space to the most serious offenders. But lately, he's had a change of heart. He said police, social service and hospital officials have convinced him that jail space must remain available for impaired people who are creating a danger to themselves and others. Clements said he will provide jail space for mental health and substance abuse cases that create public nuisances public nuisance n. a nuisance which affects numerous members of the public or the public at large, as distinguished from a nuisance which only does harm to a neighbor or a few private individuals. that can't be handled by drug detox de·tox v. To subject to detoxification. n. A section of a hospital or clinic in which patients are detoxified. and mental health services health services Managed care The benefits covered under a health contract . Holding jail space for relatively minor offenders means more criminal suspects are released from jail to control overcrowding, he said. "The corrections system literally is the social service agency of last resort," Clements said. "I was forced to re-evaluate my sense of who should be in the system. The police agencies are saying we need to take these (mentally ill and drug impaired) people in," Clements said. "I think we're being responsive to community needs." However, Clague noted the arrangement is not a solution. "We aren't treating them. We're trying to stabilize stabilize See peg. them until we can get them out," he said. Clements and Clague said they are seeking savings in other areas, such as: cutting funds to reform programs that don't focus on repeat offenders; cutting administrative support for the Public Safety Coordinating Council; cutting deputy training that is not relevant to their long-term Long-term Three or more years. In the context of accounting, more than 1 year. long-term 1. Of or relating to a gain or loss in the value of a security that has been held over a specific length of time. Compare short-term. assignment; and providing less comprehensive medical care for inmates jailed for drug and alcohol detoxification Alcohol detoxification, or 'detox', for individuals with alcohol dependence is the abrupt cessation of alcohol intake coupled with the substitution of alcohol with cross-tolerant drugs that have similar effects in order to prevent alcohol withdrawal. . However, Clements said cuts must take into account the impact on other public safety and social service agencies. "It has to be an intelligent discussion," Clements said. "It's a dramatically interdependent in·ter·de·pen·dent adj. Mutually dependent: "Today, the mission of one institution can be accomplished only by recognizing that it lives in an interdependent world with conflicts and overlapping interests" system." |
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