By Traci Bridges
Florence Morning News
FLORENCE, S.C. — The Florence County Detention Center will likely get an increase in staff thanks to a recently approved increase in the cost of an inmate’s daily stay, but the addition of officers will ultimately depend on how much revenue that increase generates.
The jail, with 14 officers per shift, is not in compliance with the minimum state standard and is in need of more personnel.
In the meantime, Florence County Sheriff’s Maj. Joe Norris, who oversees the jail, said shifts will be sufficiently manned just as they’ve always been.
“Basically, at a bare minimum, we need 14 officers to run this jail per shift, and that is what we have. But with vacations and people calling in sick or out of work for whatever reason, we don’t have any extra people. For that reason, the Department of Corrections has said we need 17 per shift and some extra officers on day shift for administrative purposes and transport to court, doctor’s appointments and things like that,” Norris said.
The Florence County Detention Center currently has four shifts of 14 people. When a shift is down an officer for whatever reason, an officer from the prior shift stays on to cover the slot or an off-duty officer is called in to work overtime.
“Basically, the number mandated by the Department of Corrections is calculated as how many do we need on shift to have 14 show up, and that target number is 17,” Norris said. “But even though we don’t have that 17, we run on 14 no matter what. We do what it takes to make sure we have that.”
Last month, Florence County Council unanimously voted to increase the cost of an inmate’s daily stay from $36 to $56, but so far that extra $20 is only allowing the detention center to hire one guard.
Florence County Council also approved a request by the sheriff’s office that will put a lieutenant on each squad in the county’s detention center for 24-hour direct supervision in response to the Department of Corrections mandates.
Florence County Council Chairman James Schofield said the changes were a compromise with the SCDC, which requested an additional staff of 17 guards, a bit of a tough sell to a tight county budget that recently hired new EMS workers.
“What we’re hoping with the upgrades that have been made we will not be adding all of those 17 people because we do not have the funds to do that; in other words when they see you’re trying to make progress, they usually work with you on it,” Schofield said. “We just hired 20 or so positions in EMS and raised millage, too. But people’s lives were at stake. If we were having a big problem in the jail, we’d have done what we need to do.”