detention center revenue model is unsustainable

As the cost to run the Cascade County Detention Center increases, Cascade County increased their number of federal inmates at the end of 2023 from 115 to 140 in order to generate more revenue. Federal inmates bring in around $95 dollars each per day as opposed to around $69 per day for state inmates.

The Cascade County Sheriff’s Office detailed detention center expenses for the past few years in a Facebook post:

• 2022: $10,432,495.73 in expenses, revenues were $6,398,660.11, leaving $4,033,835.59 in tax dollars spent on the jail.
• 2023: $10,943,464.19 in expenses, revenues were $6,343,007.38, leaving $4,600,488.32 in tax dollars spent on the jail.
• 2024: $12,104,453.99 in expenses, revenues were $7,923,808.13, leaving $4,180,645.77 that was paid by taxable dollars.

The increase in inmates caused an increase in expenses, with the jail hiring ten more detention officers, two labor union contracts that had raised salaries to help with recruitment and retention, higher medical costs, higher food cost, and higher insurance liability costs. However, the increase in inmates, and therefore the increase in revenue, allowed the amount of tax dollars spent on the jail to decline by over $400,000.

While the increase in inmates solved the budget issue, bringing in almost $8 million dollars in revenue this year as opposed to just $6.6 million in 2023, it has caused another problem: the jail has become crowded with inmates brought in from other areas for revenue purposes, leaving no space for community offenders to be housed.

Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter explains, “The public cannot withstand any more tax increases. And that’s not a goal that we want to do. It’s our responsibility as a government to come up with a more creative solution versus just making people pay more. This revenue generating model is starting to work against us, we’re running out of room to take the people off the street that need to be arrested to protect our community”.

---

---

With the jail already operating between 50 to 75 inmates overpopulated, the county now must come up with creative solutions to continue bringing in the revenue they need to run the jail, without taxing the public any further, or having to release offenders back into the community causing a public safety risk.

They’ve already begun negotiations for their bed spaces to be worth a higher value, generating more revenue from each space, but Sheriff Slaughter says this is not sustainable long term: “Taking that one bed that used to be, say, $69 a day, and now that bed’s $82 or $92 a day, or in the case of the federal inmate, it’s $115 a day. But the problem is if you look at the numbers, it’s just not sustainable anymore. We don’t have the beds to put the people in.”

MTN News

The Sheriff’s Office will be coming up with solutions with the community, with plans to attend neighborhood council meetings, and conducting Facebook Q&A’s to discuss solutions.

The Sheriff’s Office wants to educate and inform the public about these upcoming challenges, especially with the new strain on resources that will come from the Air Force Sentinel Project.

Sheriff Slaughter says, “We have the Sentinel Project coming, which is going to infuse thousands of more people into our community, which just by sheer numbers, is going to increase our jail population. So we have to be prepared for that because regardless of what the federal government throws at us with a project we have to meet that need and protect our community”.

You can learn more about the issues the Cascade County Detention Center is facing here.