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Now that is unsatisfactory and incredibly dangerous for our deputies. They just need to file bankruptcy so that they can then get and find the money to hire new ones.

The new addition will house women. 50-60 or so. It was not built to house women only. WHen opened there will be about 420 inmates total if it is full. That makes the inmat to deputy ratio about 37:1 on a given shift. Currnetly the third shift works with 7 Deputies and 200 inmates, 1st shift is 15 to Deputies to 200 inmates and 2nd shift is about the same as that. Keep in mind though that this is a high security type facility with limited inmate/Deputy contact. The new addition will be direct supervision meaning constant contact and a ratio of 2 Deputies to 68 inmates in some cases.

Was this jail built to house women? Someone told me this was the case and I got to wondering just how many. What would the ratio be if we had staffing per inmate? I am so sick of these county clowns on the commission.

Well it is finished. The 11.5 million dollar expansion of the county jail in Bessemer. It will remain empty until the Sheriff and the county commission can come to terms on where the money will come from to staff it. The commission says that the Sheriff should re-allocate his current resources to staff and open the addition. The Sheriff is requesting that the commission provide funds for hiring the needed staff. An independant study suggests that it will take 80 Deputies to adequately staff the addition. If the Sheriff were to pull those from other areas of the office it would be catastrophic. The patrol division is already understaffed, as anyone who has had to wait an hour for a non-emergency response, can attest. There are currently about 100 Deputies who work the patrol division county wide. If 80 are reassigned response times would suffer exponentially. So, where should the personel come from? I for one do not want the Sheriff to have to pull Deputies from our schools or the school resource program.
Opening the addition without proper staffing would be dangerous to Deputies. The addition is designed to be "direct supervision". This means that the Deputies assigned to this area will be inside the cell block/dorm in direct contact with the inmates. This is usually not a problem but in a situation where 68 inmates are supervised by 2 Deputies things could get ugly quickly.
Please let the commission know how you feel about this.