A key Kane County Board committee on Thursday authorized appropriating about $12 million to build a 200-bed addition to the overcrowded Kane County Correctional Center.
The Executive Committee, however, put off action on drawing up plans for a second 200-bed addition, arguing that it might not be needed.
County Board Chairman Mike McCoy said the second addition, which would increase the total jail capacity from 400 to 800, could be unnecessary if judges and attorneys did more to move cases through the criminal justice system.
Though the overcrowded jail averages 600 or more inmates a day, McCoy said that number could be kept in check.
“I don’t think we need to accept the fact that that’s going to rise on a straight line,” he said of the jail’s population. “My feeling is we can keep the jail demand at 600.”
At a hearing Tuesday about the jail, Chief Judge Grant Wegner of Kane County Circuit Court said enough was being done to move cases through the system, though he conceded no system is perfect. Sheriff Ken Ramsey took issue with McCoy’s claims that inmates are spending too much time in jail.
To address the differences of opinion, the county will begin tracking the time it takes cases to go through the system and may hire consultants to evaluate the numbers, McCoy said.
“[County Board officials] are going to have to come up with some of the ideas because they think they are doing everything 100 percent perfectly,” McCoy said.
“Everybody is still defending their turf,” said board member Karen Steve-McConnaughay (R-St. Charles), chairwoman of the Judiciary Committee. “We’re probably going to have to come up with the creative ideas and more or less shove them down everybody’s throat.”
But board member John Hoscheit (R-St. Charles) suggested that more cooperation is needed between county government and Ramsey’s office.
“We need to build a level of trust between the people who are running the jail and those who are providing funds for it,” he said.
Despite the County Board’s hesitancy on the second addition, which earlier projections showed would be necessary, Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Dan Schindlbeck called the Executive Committee vote “very good news to us.”
“The main thing is we are going ahead with the first 200-bed addition and taking care of that,” he said. “That’s the immediate problem.
“We’re willing to look at anything and try to do everything we can, working with the County Board, to alleviate the overcrowding.”
McCoy also agreed that an alternative proposed by County Board member Jim Mitchell (R-North Aurora) is worth considering.
Mitchell said a lower-security jail next to the Kane County Judicial Center in St. Charles Township, rather than a second high-security addition at the jail in Geneva, might be less expensive to staff. The lower-security jail could handle inmates who spend fewer than 30 days in jail– about half the jail’s population, Mitchell said.
Although the county has enough reserve funds to pay for the first addition, staffing it for $3 million to $5 million a year will be more difficult.
Staffing the addition would require other county departments and the sheriff’s patrol division to cut operating costs by about 15 percent, he said.
