Inmate outsourcing costs reach $1 million in 2019

Hays County has spent more than $1 million on inmate outsourcing so far this year, based on data from the weekly reports from the Hays County Sheriff’s Department.

Since the last week of January, when Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra began presenting jail population data and inmate outsourcing numbers in commissioners court meetings, the county has spent more than $1.03 million on sending inmates to other jails due to overcrowding in the Hays facility. This does not include expenditures for the weeks of Feb. 9-16 and May 19-25, when no report was given and/or commissioners court did not meet. 

For the week of May 26-June 1, the county had a daily average of 550 inmates, with a peak of 557 on May 28, according to the sheriff’s report. The daily average number of outsourced male prisoners was 216, with an average of eight outsourced female prisoners. Inmates were housed at facilities in nine different counties: Bastrop, Bell, Blanco, Burnet, Caldwell, Guadalupe, McLennan, Limestone and Walker. The cost of this outsourcing was $79,295.

The lowest weekly expenditure recorded this year was $51,569 the week of March 3-9. The peak so far has been a $79,360 expenditure the week of May 5-11 — just $65 more than this week’s cost. 

The sheriff’s report this week also included the number of hours of county jail trustee labor and the value of that work. For the month of May, the trustees worked 4,350.57 hours at a rate of $12 an hour for a total of $52,206.84 in savings. The trustees performed work ranging from kitchen duty and laundry to cleaning within the jail and special assignments.