PROGRAMS SHOULD HELP EASE JAIL OVERCROWDING

CLINTON - A reactivated community service program and more emphasis on
pre-trial releases should greatly reduce overcrowding at the Anderson
County Jail, officials said Monday.

With both those programs in operation, there will be an option to jail
sentences for nonviolent offenders charged with misdemeanor crimes,
County Mayor Rex Lynch said.

Lynch said a consultant's $49,000 study of jail population numbers
last winter "was done at a bad time.'' That study was made during a
surge in inmate population that Lynch dubbed "an anomaly.''

Lynch said the population at the jail, which was built to house 166
inmates, is now dropping.

"I am confident that the inmate population will be below 145 total
inmates by early August,'' he said in a press release.

The jail study by Carter Goble Associates Inc. of Columbia, S.C.,
recommended that the current jail more than double in size at a cost
of between $10 million and $11 million.

The expansion would address the county's jail needs through the year
2020, according to the study.

Lynch said the consultants' jail population study results were skewed
to the upside because the county's Probation Department was in limbo
last winter, and some alternatives to jail weren't available then.

The Probation Department was under investigation last winter for
allegations that director Alan Beauchamp had improper relations with
three female inmates.

Now that Beauchamp has been cleared of wrongdoing and is back on the
job, the community service program will restart this Saturday, July
17, Lynch said. That will have an "immediate effect'' on the inmate
population, he said.

Beauchamp estimated that a reactivated community service would mean
between 25 and 35 fewer jail inmates a month. Those sentenced to
community service are assigned to work on projects ranging from litter
pickup to painting fire hydrants.

Lynch said he met Monday with Anderson County Sessions Court Judge Don
Layton and plans to meet today with the county's other sessions judge,
Ron Murch, to see what can be done to reduce jail crowding.

Layton said he intends to implement "those portions (of the pretrial
release and community service programs) we think are
reasonable.''

"I don't feel like we need an $11 million jail,'' Layton said. He said
the consultants never talked to him during their study, and he hasn't
been given a copy of their findings.

"The judges need to be in the loop,'' Lynch said.

In pretrial release, defendants charged with nonviolent misdemeanor
crimes are assigned to that program instead of being placed in jail
while they await trial.

Lynch said the program is now in effect on weekdays, and he'd like it
enhanced to include weekends, when the jail population usually mushrooms.

Lynch said while he feels a doubling of the jail isn't necessary,
there is a legitimate need to expand the women's cell area. The 16-bed
unit had been overcrowded for years.

"We definitely need more housing for women, and we need to do it
immediately,'' he said.