NO ROOM AT THE JAIL

BLOUNTVILLE - When Ben Frizzell began serving his time at the
Sullivan County jail eight months ago, almost every one of his fellow
inmates had his own bed.

That's changed in recent weeks as the lockup's population has swollen
above its rated capacity, forcing some detainees to sleep on mats on
the floor.

On Friday, the jail was home to 474 inmates - 91 more than it's meant
to hold.

Jail officials predicted the population easily could balloon to more
than 500 this weekend.

"With the overcrowding is a lot of additional tension," said Frizzell,
of Bristol, who hopes to be paroled in about six months following a
cocaine conviction. "It puts everyone on edge. There's more stealing
going on, more tension about everything."

An inmate was being given medical care Friday as reporters toured the
jail with a Sheriff's Office official.

He claimed he had fallen, but Maj. Brenda Hensley, who oversees the
lockup, said it was more likely he'd been hurt in a fight.

"In the last few months, we've had an increase of about 100 inmates,"
she said, attributing the rise to a surge in crime and the state's
inability to take its prisoners off counties' hands.

As of Friday, Frizzell was among 112 prisoners with convictions and
paperwork making them official state prisoners. But because space in
state lockups is limited, some prisoners end up spending their entire
terms in the county lockup.

The state pays the county $32 per state inmate per day, which covers
some costs but does not add up to enough to pay for building more
cells, Hensley said.

Corrections officials indicated last year that the state will be short
7,000 prison beds over five years.

"We stay on the list (for transfers to state prisons) because we don't
contract with the state," Hensley said. "In the last month, we've got
just 15 or 20 out."

Sullivan isn't the only Northeast Tennessee county struggling with
jail crowding. Neighboring Carter County recently settled a lawsuit
brought by inmates. Part of the settlement was a promise to build a
new 300-bed jail.

The class-action suit alleged that inmates regularly were exposed to
raw sewage and inch-thick mold and that security was so lax that drug
use was commonplace and violence occurred daily.

As of Friday, Carter had 188 inmates in a jail certified for 91. The
settlement restricts the inmate population to 270 until the new jail
can be built. Completion is set for late 2006.

Sullivan County has plans on the drawing board to expand its jail in
phases, with an ultimate goal of housing 1,000 inmates.

But Hensley said she doesn't expect any construction until after she's
retired, and County Mayor Richard Venable said nothing is in the works
to start another building phase.

Venable said he wasn't worried.

"Last year, we were under capacity," he said. "I think this is a
temporary condition."

Two years ago, the county finished a $6.2 million first-phase
expansion project that increased capacity from 221 in the main jail to
353. Last year, a $250,000 project added another 30 bed spaces.

The latter project occurred after an escape prompted the sheriff to
close a jail annex that had housed about 100 low-risk inmates since
the late 1980s.

The mayor said a new grant-funded drug court probation program, which
will put more first and second offenders on intensive probation
instead of sentencing them to jail time, should help keep the jail
population down.

Venable said he and the mayors of Washington, Hawkins, Carter and
Johnson counties traveled to Knoxville recently to explore the
possibility of combining forces and building a regional jail.

While that idea has been suggested, it so far has received no serious
discussion.