PRISON OVERCROWDED; COUNTY LOOKING FOR WAYS TO ALLEVIATE PROBLEM

JANESVILLE, Wis. (AP) -- The Rock County Jail is bursting and officials are
considering several options to relieve overcrowding.

The jail has 526 beds and a rated capacity of 477. On Friday, it was housing
512. Jails across Wisconsin are seeing similar overcrowding problems.

Rock County's jail routinely passes its rated capacity even though it
stopped renting space to out-of-county inmates in May.

As a result, inmates are sleeping on floors outside locked cells, officials
said. State rules prohibit locking more than two inmates in a cell, and
doors must remain open so inmates outside of cells have access to a toilet.

Such conditions are not only uncomfortable for inmates, but dangerous for
jail staff, said Barb Barrington, jail commander, and Sheriff Howard Erickson.

Every night corrections officers must tiptoe among sleeping inmates to make
hourly head counts.

"If an officer was to be grabbed, it could be a hostage situation or who
knows what," Erickson said.

County officials are discussing a variety of options to try and combat the
problem.

County Board Chairman Terry Maybee said the board should act quickly to add
a 300-bed addition to the jail.

"It's inevitable that we're going to have to build or do some thing," he said.

If the county builds quickly, it can resume renting extra cells to house
state prison inmates and thereby recoup some of the construction cost,
Maybee said.

One temporary solution under consideration is putting selected work-release
inmates on electronic monitoring and sending them home.

The inmates would be tracked through phone calls. When they answer the
phone, inmates are told to repeat a series of numbers.

To confirm the person on the phone is the inmate, a computer compares the
voice to a previous recording of the inmate's voice. The system would cost
the county nothing, but it would lose revenue that work-release inmates
would pay to stay in jail.

"To do this is not our first choice, but unfortunately the jail overcrowding
issue has put us in a position where we have to seek other means,"
Barrington said.

Another option is sending inmates to other county jails and paying rent of
$60 a day per inmate. At that rate, Rock County would pay $21,900 a year for
each inmate it houses in a different county's jail.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett