GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – In 2016, it has become daily routine for Brown County Sheriff’s officials to look at the county jail population.
Brown County Sheriff John Gossage calls it a growing problem.
“We’re crammed in there, literally. We’ve got inmates sleeping on the floor, but when I say floor they are on mattresses. We’re trying to make it as comfortable as possible.”
According to the sheriff’s department, the capacity between Brown County’s jail facilities is 750 inmates. The average capacity this year is just under 695.
However, that doesn’t include inmates on electronic monitoring or those shipped to Outagamie County. Currently, Brown County has eight inmates in Outagamie County’s jail. That number has been as high as 18.
Brown County Supervisor Pat Evans.
“Our jail is busting at the seams and we have to look at ways at ways to house people”
Gossage asked the county’s public safety committee to bond next year for an architectural study to expand the jail. Gossage says the addition, or pod, the department would like to build would likely cost between $14 million and $17 million.
“It’s a buildout of about two years before you actually see it breaking ground or being completed, so every year that we wait we’re looking at about a million dollars added on of those costs.”
In the meantime, the sheriff’s department is shifting juvenile inmates to a new pod to open up 20 beds for adult inmates.
However, Sheriff Gossage warns that is only a temporary fix for a jail population projected to grow one percent each year moving forward.
Gossage says it costs about $55 a day to house inmates in Outagamie County’s jail, which is the same price to house inmates in Brown County’s jail. However, there is added cost in transporting the inmates, and if they need medical treatment.
