DRUG SUSPECTS FLOOD ALREADY CROWDED JAIL

BAY MINETTE -- The new prisoners booked into the Baldwin County jail as a
result of this week's roundup of suspected drug dealers has done more than
push up the facility's inmate count.

It has demonstrated the difficulty of meeting goals set by local officials
to quickly adjust bonds so nonviolent inmates do not clog the overcrowded
jail while they await trial.

The Sheriff's Department on Wednesday arrested 36 people who were indicted
by a grand jury on numerous drug charges.

The arrests are largely responsible for bumping the inmate population at
the Baldwin County Corrections Cen ter from 466 on Monday to nearly 500 on
Thursday.

That occupancy rate has not been seen for at least six months.

It was numbers like those that inspired a plan by Baldwin District Attorney
David Whetstone to reduce bonds of certain suspects. Many remain in jail
while awaiting trial, simply because they cannot afford to pay their bonds,
Whetstone has said.

Judges often eventually reduce bail for those individuals. Whetstone's idea
was to identify them more quickly, thus saving space.

After touring the jail last week, county commissioners and the Sheriff's
Department agreed to Whetstone's plan. He assigned a staff member to work
with jail staff, but officials there said they do not know of a single
inmate who has been released as a result.

"I don't think anything has happened since that meeting," said Chief Deputy
Larry Milstid.

Whetstone could not be reached for comment Thursday evening. At a news
conference earlier in the day, he pledged to determine today whether
inmates could be released to make room for the new prisoners.

The jail, designed to hold 404 prisoners, has suffered from chronic
overcrowding. It hit 530 around this time last year.

The inmate problem has eased somewhat since the Alabama Department of
Corrections began stepping up efforts to reduce a backlog in the number of
state inmates stuck in county jails.

Still, Milstid noted, the inmate population has remained consistently over
its set capacity. Officials at the Sheriff's Department have complained
that overcrowding forces inmates to sleep on mattresses on the floor, taxes
the department's resources and increases the strain on officers.

Although the idea of getting rid of nonviolent offenders appears
attractive, Milstid said, the reality is complex.

Take Wednesday's haul of suspected drug dealers, for instance. None was
charged with a violent crime, but Assistant District Attorney Carmen Bosch
said that does not mean they are not dangerous.

Bosch said she would be inclined to oppose reducing the standard bond out
of fear that the suspected dealers -- many of whom are charged with selling
drugs within a three-mile radius of schools -- would go right back to their
trade.

"We consider drug dealers a threat to society," she said.

Prosecutors insisted that many of those arrested Wednesday wear electronic
monitoring devices as a condition of bond. Some people who were able to
make bond spent the last two nights in jail because the company that
provides the devices ran out.

Patrick Marston, of Mobile-based Insight Treatment Program, said he hooked
up five monitors before exhausting his supply. More should arrived today,
he said.