Kendall OKs pact to house Kane prisoners
By Steve Lord slord@stmedianetwork.com June 11, 2012 6:32PM
Updated: July 14, 2012 6:13AM
YORKVILLE — The Kendall County Board has approved an agreement with Kane County to house Kane’s prisoners in the Kendall jail when necessary.
The cost to Kane County to house prisoners in Kendall will continue at its present rate — $60 a day.
The good news for Kane County is that it does not presently see the need for the overflow housing. In fact, it spent nothing on overflow from its Corrections Board and Care budget in 2011, and anticipates spending nothing again in the 2012 budget.
In 2010, Kane had an average of 655 prisoners each day in the jail, which has a capacity of 640. That was cut to a daily average of 608 prisoners in 2011.
That meant a cut in the Kane budget for board and care outside the county from $473,587 in 2010 to nothing in 2011.
But that also means a cut in revenue in the Kendall County Jail budget. In fiscal year 2010, the Kendall sheriff’s office took in $787,460 for inmate board and care at the jail in Yorkville. That fell to $775,623 in 2011.
The sheriff’s office has estimated it will be $750,000 for 2012, but Chief Deputy Scott Koster said as of May 31, the amount taken in is $427,143, which means the sheriff’s office should meet or exceed that budget estimate for the full year.
Clearly, the amount Kendall gets for housing other counties’ prisoners is fluid. Koster called it “very frustrating” to estimate revenue from outside prisoners in the budget.
“We could have 60 one month, and the next month we could have six,” he said.
At one time, before building its current jail, Kane was a regular provider of revenue to Kendall, consistently housing prisoners there. That continued, but at a lesser pace, when Kane’s new jail was built on Route 38 west of Geneva. But new policies have cut that to nothing, at least for the time being.
The biggest single provider of out-of-county prisoners to Kendall right now is DeKalb County, Koster said.
