NASHVILLE — Bradley County Sheriff Tim Gobble urged Tennessee lawmakers Wednesday to boost state payments to local jails, saying the state’s current cap doesn’t meet local expenses.

The sheriff told the General Assembly’s Fiscal Review Committee that Bradley County’s 408-bed jail on average has about 87 state inmates awaiting transfer to state prisons. Bradley County’s daily costs are $46.45 per day, while the state cap on reimbursements is only $35, he said.

“Even if you do increase that reimbursement from $35 to $46 a day, it is still less than the cost of incarceration ... in the state penitentiary,” Sheriff Gobble said. “It’s saving the state money, even increasing the reimbursement.”

He later said the county may be losing upward of $365,000 a year because of the state’s $35 cap.

Earlier, Fiscal Review Committee staff estimated the state’s cost at its prisons and Corrections Corporation of America-run facilities is $69.18 per day. The state last fiscal year budgeted $141.1 million for payments to local jails for holding state inmates who have yet to enter the state system or state inmates who have been sentenced to serve time locally.

Committee Chairman Rep. Charles Curtiss, D-Sparta, said he sympathizes with local jail officials’ plight and would like to boost payments. But he also said that local jails often do not have the same educational and other types of rehabilitative programs that state institutions have.

“I think it (increased payments) is something we need to do,” Rep. Curtiss said later, but he noted the state continues to face budget problems. “We just don’t have the financial capability of making a major adjustment right now.”

He said he supported legislation last session that makes it easier for counties to unite to run regional facilities. The bill originally boosted payments, but budget cuts forced the provision to be cut.

In other action, the panel heard from Nashville Police Chief Ronal Serpas, who took issue with legislative cost estimates on legislation that he maintained unfairly prevents passage of tougher sentencing laws.

“The ones that can’t be saved, we’re wasting our time giving them break after break, thinking they are suddenly going to change our minds. It’s just not going to happen,” the chief said.

Sheriff Gobble said he believes there is a “subset of our population, of course, that cannot be rehabilitated. There are a number that can. We need to try.”

But there are increasing numbers of violent young offenders with gang affiliations, the sheriff said.

“Many of these folks, even though they’re young, are so violent, so offensive ... that they cannot be rehabilitated. We need to make sure those folks stay off the streets.”

Comments