Jail running smoothly, sheriff says

By Randy Mitchell

City Editor

ADA — Pontotoc County Sheriff John Christian addressed a group of residents Monday and said operations of the jail are going well.

Christian was guest speaker at a weekly Kiwanis Club lunch meeting held at the Aldridge Building in downtown Ada. He said aside from some minor construction problems, everything is running smoothly.

He said the Pontotoc County Justice Center — which can hold 200 inmates — is currently housing 157 inmates, 58 of whom have already been sentenced to serve time in the Oklahoma Department of Corrections (ODOC). He said because of overcrowding in Oklahoma’s prison system, ODOC is paying the county to house the inmates until bed spaces become available.

“Once they’re sentenced to ODOC, they’re actually their prisoner even though they haven’t actually been accepted at their facility,” Christian said.

ODOC pays the county $27 a day to house each inmate which, Christian said, comes to an average reimbursement of $1,600 a day for housing sentenced inmates. He said it costs the county on average  about $20 a day to house inmates.

Christian said without the money from ODOC, the jail would be in trouble because the two-sixteenths of one-cent sales tax originally calculated is not enough to run the jail.

“That money brings in — on average —about $40,000 to $45,000 a month,” Christian said. “The problem with that is, (we pay) $63,119 a month just in personnel salaries. So that $45,000 doesn’t cover that.”

Christian said number crunchers calculated that two-sixteenths of one cent (of every dollar spent in Pontotoc County) would be enough to cover the operational costs of the facility based on a number of employees the Department of Health said would be needed.

“After they’d already told them a number (of employees) that would be needed on staff, they nearly doubled that number,” Christian said. “So we went from $35,000 (monthly) for payroll to $63,000 because they require us to have so many on staff. There’s no way around that. You either meet it or they will close you down.”

He said the county is close to working out a deal with the city of Ada to house Ada police prisoners.

“I truly believe they want to get out of the jail business,” Christian said. “I understand that. I can’t. If I could, I probably would. It’s a no-win situation sometimes.”

Christian said the city would be charged what other cities and ODOC are charged for housing prisoners — $27 a day. He said other towns in Pontotoc County — Allen, Roff and Stonewall — and Chickasaw Nation Lighthorse police, are charged the same for housing prisoners.