County jail may be closed if it remains overcrowded After a visit from the state fire inspector threatened to shut down the Canadian County Jail for being over capacity, the Canadian County Sheriff’s department began shipping inmates to Dewey county as well as releasing some inmates on their own recognizance and turning some over to the state Department of Corrections.
Over the next week, this is expected to drop inmate population at the county jail to acceptable levels. However, the sheriff and his department see this move as only just the beginning.
“We’re trying to facilitate a county the size of this, which would require 440 beds in its jail, and we only have 72,” Canadian County sheriff Randall Edwards said Tuesday. “It’s the reason we have 12,000 warrants we can’t serve, it’s the reason we have to send prisoners to other counties.”
Over the past several years, the Canadian County jail has had difficulty matching the inmate population. Last week, state Fire Marshall Inspector Heath Noyes visited the jail on Wednesday and cited the jail as being a threat to the safety of the staff and the inmates.
During Noyes’ visit, there were 114 inmates within the jail’s walls, but the jail is only equipped to hold 72. Noyes issued an ultimatum stating the jail must be brought down to its licensed level within 24 hours or face possible closure. Noyes was unable to make his scheduled reappearance Thursday and was snowed in on the raincheck on Monday.
Over the past week, the Edwards and his department have scrambled for some way to fix the issue.
One thing the department was able to do was to broker a deal with sending 17 inmates to Dewey County for $20 a day per inmate. This is down from the rumored deal with Grady County, which was estimated to be $48 a day per inmate. See the rest of the story in the Feb. 11th edition of the Piedmont-Surrey Gazette.
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