Consultant lays out options as Todd County weighs rising jail costs

Kelly White, a consultant and former deputy commissioner of corrections for Kentucky, presented his feasibility study to the Todd County Fiscal Court, saying the county’s inmate population and correction-related costs are driving rising transfers in the county budget.

White told the court he found four main, largely uncontrollable cost drivers: staffing levels and pay, variable medical costs (including occasional catastrophic claims), transportation and fixed payments on bonds and facilities. “There’s really four locations where most of the budget goes and you can’t control it,” he said, explaining that those elements create large baseline costs for the jail.

White laid out several options for limiting the county’s net outlays. He said better collections of inmate per-diem and fees are a basic step—“the auditor decided that now every jail has to have a collection process,” he said—and cited third-party collection services as one approach. He also suggested reconsidering bond-setting and court practices that leave people in custody longer than necessary.

As a programmatic option, White recommended exploring a substance-abuse treatment (SAC) program that would place eligible, lower-security inmates in a 180-day class led by a college-educated practitioner. His back-of-envelope math, as presented, showed a model of 25 participants per class, run twice a year, with a graduate bonus and an added per-diem that could reduce net transfers. In his remarks he referenced state per-diem figures in the transcript (the presentation referenced both $35.34 and $45.34 per day in different places), and emphasized that program design and certification affect the extra per-diem the county could receive.

On capacity, White said retrofitting the existing building to add meaningful bed space would be difficult and recommended pursuing alternatives such as converting a nearby non–class-D-secure building for programming or housing lower-security inmates. He gave a planning-scale estimate for a full new facility of roughly 350 beds at about $25 million to $35 million, stressing that precise costs depend on design and state standards.

White warned against simply closing the facility or outsourcing the county’s inmates without careful planning. He said outsourcing can shift direct costs to another county or vendor while increasing transportation and indirect operational costs (officer time, fuel and staffing), sometimes producing higher overall expense.

He acknowledged some data gaps in the study—most notably, the time from arrest to adjudication/sentencing was not analyzed in detail—and offered to provide follow-up data by request. The court thanked White for the study and indicated staff and elected officials would review options and follow up.

Next steps: White offered to be available for follow-up questions and additional data runs; the court did not take a formal vote on policies or capital projects at the meeting.