By Lindell Kay
The Jacksonville Daily News
JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — The Onslow County Sheriff’s Department will switch where it houses out-of-county inmates in October, a move that Sheriff Ed Brown said will save the county money and hassles.
The Board of Commissioners voted at its last meeting to approve a contract with Sampson County to ship Onslow’s overflow population to the new jail there.
The move from Pamlico County -- which required Onslow to pay for 50 inmates whether they were locked up there or not -- to Sampson County, which has agreed to a pay-per-inmate contract, is long overdue, Brown said.
The new contract, which goes into effect Oct. 20, states that Sampson County will receive $50 per day for each Onslow County inmate housed in the Sampson County jail. Onslow County will be charged half the daily rate for any inmate released before noon.
“The Sheriff of Onslow County shall not be required to maintain a minimum number of inmates in the Sampson County detention facility,” the contract reads.
The new contract is in sharp contrast to the contract Onslow County held with Pamlico County for the last 17 months, which states, “Onslow County shall pay Pamlico County the lump sum amount of $82,500 per month, regardless of the actual number of Onslow County inmates and number of days housed in the Pamlico County detention facility.”
While Pamlico County was charging Onslow a flat fee, other counties were paying by the inmate.
Lenoir County, which has a contract with Pamlico County for the housing of inmates, pays only for each inmate held in the Pamlico County Jail, said Maj. Chris Hill with the Lenoir County Sheriff’s Department.
Last year, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Resources instructed Onslow County to reduce its jail population. Then-County Manager Frank Clifton negotiated the contract with Pamlico County in March 2007 for housing 50 Onslow County jail inmates at $55 per day. The Sampson County jail was still being built at the time.
Clifton -- currently the interim town manager for North Topsail Beach -- told The Daily News the Pamlico County jail was the only available detention center in the area at the time.
He said the county wanted to guarantee there was space for 50 inmates available at all times, since other counties were also using the Pamlico County jail.
Brown said his jail administrators kept the beds full because they had to pay for them one way or the other.
“If you are going to have to pay for something whether you use it or not, you might as well use it,” he said. But the ill-conceived contract with Pamlico was starting to mean not only a financial loss for Onslow County, but create a hassle for Onslow jailers, Brown said.
“If we needed to get five inmates out of Pamlico and bring them here, then we had to find five inmates here to send up there,” he said.
Copyright 2008 The Jacksonville Daily News