Corpus Christi (KIII news — The inmate population at the Nueces County Jail came perilously close to reaching capacity this week and the sheriff is looking at options to solve the problem.
However, there is one option on the table that could cost taxpayers a lot of money.
"If it causes me concern, it should cause those commissioners concern," Nueces County Sheriff Jim Kaelin said.
Kaelin said his jail is running out of both space and the jailers need to run it.
"We got as high as 37 vacancies in the jail," Kaelin said. "That's more than a shift. Now you couple the 37 vacancies with the, last night when I checked my population in our facility, we were at 97-percent."
That's almost full capacity and comes precariously near an early-90s federally mandated court order that forbids overcrowding.
"The federal court order gives me a solution -- to move the necessary inmates into alternative housing," Kaelin said. "But the County would have to pay for it, and that's extremely expensive."
According to the sheriff's calculations, if he were to choose to move 100 inmates out of the County jail to, for instance, the privately owned Coastal Bend Detention Center, at $50 a day that would add up to more than $1 million a year.
"We're going to have to have some real discussions about that," Nueces County Judge Loyd Neal said.
Neal holds the purse strings and said there is no way he will let the sheriff transfer inmates to private facilities.
"It's not an option for me," Neal said. "We may get pushed up against the wall and have some rocks chucked at me, but I can tell you right now, I'm not for that."
"More than seven years I've been working on jail expansion, jail expansion, jail expansion," Kaelin said. "This community can't continue its growth but not continue its size of the jail over seven years. At the first of this year they finally started construction on adding 144 beds."
The additional beds are being added to the McKenzie Jail Annex on NPID, but this week engineers working on the expansion informed county commissioners an issue with the facilities fire alarm system will delay the project at least a year.
With cost overruns of $1.2 million, the sheriff said his back is against the wall on this one.
"When push comes to shove, as sheriff of this county I will assure the citizens of this community I'll do what's necessary to keep us from being sued in federal court for an overcrowded jail," Kaelin said.
A judges meeting is planned for next week. Neal said he will be discussing the jail issue with them in hopes of coming to a less costly resolution.
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