By Bill Dolan
The Times
CROWN POINT — The sheriff predicts Lake County officials soon will miss the free labor from the inmate work-release center they are killing.
“It’s done a lot of good community service in Gary, East Chicago, Hammond, Merrillville, Griffith, Cedar Lake, Lowell and everywhere,” John Buncich said.
He said the biggest demand for free inmate labor came from the Lake County Government Center administrative building, where the County Council voted earlier this month to lay off the program’s 28-member staff and shift its $1.1 million budget for other purposes.
“The (county government) A and B buildings will call all the time for our guys to move furniture and boxes, appliances. Who is going to do the work now?” Buncich asked.
The 29-year-old program, set to close next month, is falling victim to the U.S. Department of Justice’s demand the county hire 24 more corrections officers, with a combined $1.4 million in new salaries and benefits annually.
The new officers would staff a mental health center being built within the 1,040-bed Lake County Jail. It would attend to the needs of about 300 jail inmates diagnosed with mental illness, according to a county government consultant.
The sheriff said, “We knew we had to hire additional corrections officers in January. I urged them then to get together and try to work this out and come up with a funding mechanism.
“They refused and at the eleventh hour when (the Department of Justice) said they were going to file contempt charges against the county if we don’t do this by May 13. I get a letter that the decision (to close work-release) is made.
“I never had a chance to respond,” said the sheriff who was at a police memorial service in Washington, D.C., during last week’s vote.
The sheriff said the inmates have performed 228,000 hours of community service valued at $1.7 million since January 2013 working at the county animal control center, the coroner’s office, the police garage and jail laundry division.
The work also involved moving official records, painting courtrooms, assisting the Ross Township food pantry, the Brother’s Keeper shelter in Gary and fundraising events for the Nuns of St. Mark.
The county also received $357,000 since January 2012 from work-release inmates working private jobs.
Council President Ted Bilski said Friday the escalating spending demands by the sheriff and the Justice Department to improve health care and security in the jail left a reluctant council with little choice but to find the new money from within the sheriff’s current budget.
The sheriff said the council could have taken the money from the new local income tax revenues to hire new corrections officers and keep work-release, but Bilski said all income tax money this year already was committed to the jail, consolidation of E-911 and other public safety services.
“We also consider the services that were provided in the past. We are hoping to have cooperation from the sheriff to continue helping animal control and laundry service with his jail trusties,” Bilski said.
Buncich said the work-release program was created in 1985 to reduce overpopulation in the county jail by providing minimum-security housing for minor offenders. The program currently has 77 male and female inmates.
Buncich said that benefit will be lost when the jail’s current population of 740 inmates rises under a new law requiring convicts normally sent to state prisons for short sentences to be kept at county lockups.
Buncich said, “The work-release program would have been our release valve. Now, our jail population is going to skyrocket, which means we would have to hire 11 more corrections officers after that,” Buncich said.
Bilski said he hopes Lake County Community Corrections, a state-funded halfway house for state prisoners, can provide minimum-security housing for current and future inmates. Community corrections officials said they also provide community service work for their inmate population.
The sheriff said county officials will lose control of where community service is performed since it is a state program. “Their boss is (Gov. Mike) Pence,” he said.