GREENFIELD — County jail officials plan to hire and train five new staffers later this fall, around the same time ground is expected to be broken on a bigger jail.
The Hancock County Council on Wednesday voted to hire five additional jailers this October, costing $50,000 from the county’s general fund for the year. The extra staff will not only help the currently understaffed facility, but it’s also the first step in the county’s plan to increase staff for the proposed 440-bed county jail.
Hancock County Sheriff Brad Burkhart has previously said he needs 22 additional jailers by 2021, almost doubling the current staff of 27. The current jail, located in downtown Greenfield, has 157 beds and is regularly overcrowded. The county intends to spend no more than $43 million to build a bigger jail on county-owned land along U.S. 40 between County Roads 400E and 500E.
The county is expected to receive bids on the jail project next week, and construction could start within the next few months.
Last month, the council tentatively OK’d adding 12 new jailers to the 2020 budget. While five of those start in 2019, the county will hire seven more in late 2020. The funding for the correctional officers, starting in 2020, will come from a portion of the county’s recently approved 0.2% local income tax increase, which goes into effect Oct. 1. Salaries for jailers start at $39,374, Burkhart said.
The county jail commander, Keith Oliver, has already interviewed more than a dozen potential candidates for the positions, Burkhart said. Oliver has an idea on who will fill the five spots this year, Burkhart said, and there’s a pool of other candidates for future positions.
Burkhart said he intends to ask for 10 more jailers during the 2021 budget talks next summer.
Jim Shelby, county councilman and budget committee chairman, said although Burkhart has asked for a total of 22 new jailers, he said many variables will influence the decision on how many to hire. For example, the population of the jail might not be big enough to warrant a 49-person staff, Shelby said.
“So we’ll have to see about 2021,” Shelby said, “how many we would add to the 12 that we have so far authorized.”
Burkhart said he’s glad the jail will have more staff, but he added it’s “unfortunate” it happened due to the county building a bigger jail. A 2012 staffing study revealed the jail needed an additional 12 employees. But between 2012 and budget talks last year, the council only approved funding for five new jailers. Burkhart had for years proposed hiring staff incrementally, rather than all at once.
If the county hires 22 extra jailers, bringing the full-time staff to 49, staffing still will not be in line with similarly sized county jails. Johnson County’s 322-bed jail has 60 jailers; Wayne County’s 416-bed facility has 51 employees; and Hamilton County’s 537-bed jail has more than 100 jailers.
