Shoshone County loses jail certification

WALLACE — Like many other counties and cities across the country, Shoshone County has seen a rise in crime rates over the past few years. This has led to an increased number of inmates needing to be housed in local and state correctional facilities — many of them over capacity.

The Shoshone County Public Safety Building is not immune to this problem and, because of this limited space, the jail has now lost certification, which is a major cause of concern for Sheriff Holly Lindsey.

According to a recent inspection by the Idaho Sheriffs Association, it was documented that the Shoshone County jail facilities were over their rated inmate capacity in at least one of their cell block or housing units for 76 of 91 days.

By failing the certification, the jail now faces a potential penalty from its insurer, the Idaho Counties Risk Management Program, better known as ICRMP. The situation could also have a negative impact on revenue the county receives from housing state and federal inmates.

“ICRMP is our insurance carrier and I’m not sure what they’re going to do just yet,” Lindsey said. “They can either reduce our insurance coverage significantly, remove it altogether, or hopefully they won’t mess with it at all. But this insurance protects us if, for example, the county receives a lawsuit from an inmate and we don’t have the insurance to cover it then the cost will come out of the county’s pocket.”

The facility is designed to hold up to 48 inmates with the flexibility to add an additional 10 beds to the cellblocks, but according to jail Captain Eli Lopez, in recent months they have seen as many as 64 inmates at times.

The rated inmate capacity number of 48 doesn’t entirely reflect the difficulty of the situation. The way the jail is segregated also presents challenges.

The cellblocks are broken up by males and females, but then also by inmates requiring special housing or protective custody, and then they also maintain a specific block for sex offenders. All are either at capacity at this moment or over their rated limits.

“It’s important to keep our communities safe, but we need places to house these inmates,” Lopez said. “So when the public is wondering why this person or that person has been released, a lot of it has to do with a lack of housing or an officer safety issue.”

Shoshone County jail is required to have two deputies on patrol at all times, but that number applies directly to the jail’s rated capacity. When the jail becomes overfull, two deputies aren’t enough.

Currently, the jail is short four detention staff deputies, which makes an already difficult situation more challenging to navigate.

One of the major reasons that filling and maintaining these positions has become difficult is rooted directly in money.

The ability to pay detention staff as competitively as surrounding areas is difficult, but then there’s also the state of the workplace.

“The biggest solution, and what a lot of agencies are looking at, is a new jail,” Lopez said. “We’ve heard it before, our jail is outdated, the crime rate is skyrocketing and we’re not just housing the town drunk anymore. We’re housing people with extensive records from all over the country and it’s filling up our jail.”

The outdated facilities along with the stressful nature of corrections work make for a hard sell to potential recruits.

In 2019, Shoshone County voters rejected a bond that would have funded construction of a new $22 million state-of-the-art facility that could house 98 inmates.

Four years later, the jail has fallen further into disrepair and behind the times.

Former Sheriff Mike Gunderson frequently spoke of Band-Aid fixes that were being made to the facility, explaining in 2019 that it would cost $9 million just to bring the building up to current standards. With today's rising crime rate and increased inmate population, that $9 million upgrade would not have been enough.

“I’ve never seen the jail this full this consistently,” Lindsey said. “My worry is that, with crime rates increasing all across the country, we’re not going to see this problem go away anytime soon and it’s only going to be harder on this facility. We’re not looking at a new facility as a question of if we do it, it’s a matter of when. We have to do it sometime. That’s really the only option.”

Over the years, maintaining Idaho Sheriffs Association certification has been financially beneficial for the county, resulting in $200,000 to $250,000 in revenue, annually, from housing state and federal inmates.

For now, Sheriff Lindsey is waiting to hear back from ICRMP regarding its decision concerning the failed certification. In the meantime, the county may have lost one of its larger annual revenue generators.