Inmates getting out early in Weber / Tight economy, Reduced Staff Force Sheriff to Make a Move.
OGDEN — After cutting 25 staffing positions, officials at Weber County Jail will begin to release certain inmates earlier than their sentenced release time because of a shortage in the staff-to-inmate ratio.
Because of the staff cuts, the jail has an unusual overcrowding situation — while there are still plenty of beds, there are not enough staff people to run the facility safely.
“The county has had a significant reduction in revenue,” Weber County Sheriff Brad Slater told the Standard-Examiner editorial board Monday. “Part of our share of that reduction package was to do away with 25 full-time positions. It needed to be done. It’s tough on everybody. What that equates to is a reduction of certain areas of services that we’ve been able to provide.”
Because of the staff cuts, Slater said, the jail isn’t able to hold as many inmates. To address the problem, Slater decided to implement a program that will allow inmates being held as part of their probation, instead of serving time in prison, to be released before their sentences are completed.
“It’s been an issue that has occurred over the last several years, where condition of probation inmates were being held in the county jail in lieu of going to prison,” he said. “That number kept going up, and the funding kept getting smaller and smaller.”
Slater said he plans to allow about 100 of the 215 condition of probation inmates to have early release starting next week. He said the inmates must have completed at least 70 percent of their sentences before they are released. The decision as to which inmates are allowed to be released early will be made by inmate classification staff at the jail.
This isn’t the first time the jail has had issues with overcrowding. Slater said in the 1990s, the jail experienced a similar situation, when the size of the facility wasn’t able to handle the number of inmates.
“We started to see problems coming where we couldn’t function as a jail,” he said. “We would be just more of a satellite prison, and not really be able to accommodate the police departments and folks that needed places to put people in.”
Before the jail off 12th Street was built, Slater said, most inmates who were not arrested for felony charges were simply booked and released, because there was no room at the jail. They are implementing the early release program to avoid this kind of situation happening again.
Slater said Utah County and the Salt Lake county jail have had to start very similar programs because of a decline in funding. He said Davis County Jail has not yet been affected by extreme budget cuts.
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