Friday, November 24, 2000
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Friday, November 24, 2000 |
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Inmates may be paying their own way By JOHN THOMPSON Coweta County's prisoners may soon be helping to pay for their incarceration. That's the word from Sheriff Mike Yeager, who got the green light Tuesday night from the Coweta County Commission to pursue a program to provide money back to the county for inmates' costs while in jail. Yeager said the program is run by Justice Benefits, a company that does a monthly census of the county's prisoners. If the prisoners have been in jail at least a month, the company determines whether the inmate is receiving any funds, such as Social Security payments, that can be given to the county to help pay for the inmate's stay in prison. Yeager said the prisoners are not supposed to be receiving any funds while in jail, so the program is totally legal and would provide a revenue source to the county to pay for increasing costs at the jail. "We have to pay for food and medical costs, which are really going up," Yeager said. Yeager said any funds realized would go back into the county's general funds and not the sheriff's budget. Commissioner Robert Wood did not like the idea. "I'm not ready to put any more burdens on families just because somebody has made a mistake," he said. But Commission Chairman Vernon "Mutt" Hunter said the funds never get to the family members. "That check should go back to the county. This is not taking anything away from the dependents," he said. Hunter then moved to approve the program after getting more information from the company that would administer it. In his motion, he made it clear that he wanted the program to follow the strict guidelines of the law and for no funds to be taken away from dependents. The motion passed 4-0-1 count, with Wood abstaining because he said he did not know enough about the program and wanted to make sure that families weren't hurt.
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