CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Additional questions are being asked about the accuracy of regional jail bills.
Last week, a coalition of 12 county commissions, including the Monongalia County Commission, said several mistakes had been uncovered
“As we went through and each county started to hire individuals to look through the bills, we saw that at times the bills were 10 to 30 percent incorrect,” Bloom said. “This is hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Bloom said the error rate is 10 percent.
Kanawha County Commission President Ben Salango expressed similar concerns during a Monday appearance on MetroNews “Talkline.”
“We have three full-time employees going through these to find the mistakes,” Salango said. “I think in the first 60 days we found over $100,000 in billing errors, and that’s a lot of money.”
The coalition members said state officials submit invoices via a fax machine, and one of the counties received about 500 pages over a two-week period. Like Bloom, Salango is calling for the process to be brought into the 21st century and for lawmakers to reexamine the fees charged to operate the jail-prison system.
“I think we need administrative action to upgrade the systems so they are a little more tech-savvy,” Salango said. “And we also need some legislative help.”
Salango said restructuring bail procedures would be an important step in the process. The total cost in Kanawha County could be substantially lowered if an agreement could be reached to limit the jail stay for non-violent offenders.
“About 42 percent of our jail population in the county was non-violent; lower-dollar crimes are what we have found through the Jail Bill Task Force,” Salango said.
Many non-violent offenders are unable to bail out of jail, leading to an extended stay that costs counties exponentially more than if they were allowed to bond out of jail. He said there are some who may not appear if given that freedom, but the counties have to get control of the costs and correct the errors.
“That’s just the way this works, unfortunately,” Salango said. “But we can’t keep paying to keep people in jail for these non-violent crimes. That’s all there is to it—it’s not sustainable, and it is not affordable.”
Many states have eliminated the problem by privatizing corrections operations. Salango said a thorough review of the numbers is needed because changes are going to have to be made to keep counties solvent.
“I hate to say it, but potentially that is an option,” Salango said. “I know one thing that cannot happen is we can’t increase our jail bill by $1.7 million over the next two years; otherwise we’re going to have to lay off deputies and half of the prosecutors’ office, and we can’t do that.”