By John Myers
Duluth News Tribune
ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Minn. — Taxpayers across St. Louis County spent nearly $1.5 million last year to send local criminal suspects to other counties because the jail in Duluth was full.
Over the past decade, that price tag hit more than $11.7 million — not including staff time and transportation costs for deputies to bring prisoners nearly every day to jails in Pine, Aitkin and Mille Lacs counties in Minnesota and Douglas County in Wisconsin. All those jails have extra beds and are eager to charge about $50 a day per inmate to take St. Louis County’s overload.
The problem isn’t that the St. Louis County Jail in Duluth is too small, it’s that too many of the prisoners are staying too long, a consultant told county commissioners on Tuesday. More specifically, the problem is the amount of time suspects and convicted criminals spend in jail awaiting hearings, pre-sentence investigations, sentencing and appeals, said Ken Schoen, former commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Corrections and former director of the University of Minnesota Law School Institute of Criminal Justice.
Full story: Consultant: Too many inmates stay in St. Louis County Jail too long