Despite $60M jail expansion, Hays County spends millions to send inmates to other counties
Amy Kamp, who has been advocating for inmates at the Hays County Jail who remain incarcerated for extended periods of time without having been convicted of a crime, poses for a portrait outside the jail Friday, Oct. 14, 2022, in San Marcos.SAN MARCOS — Cyrus Gray has been incarcerated at the Hays County Jail for more than four years without a conviction.
Hays County is grappling with an inmate population that’s growing proportionately to the the rest of the county, and Gray and hundreds of other inmates are caught in the crosshairs as local lawmakers and law enforcement officials try to figure out just what to do with the ballooning numbers. But the jail can’t fill its empty beds due to critical staffing shortages of corrections officers, said Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra. The sheriff’s office hasn’t been able to fill as many as 70 positions needed in its jail, so inmates have to go to other facilities that have appropriate staffing levels.The Hays County Sheriff’s Office did not return multiple messages seeking comment for this story.
The plurality of those inmates — 43 percent — have been there for one to six months, according to the dashboard. Nearly 4 percent have been there for more than three years. “If you’re charged with something and held in jail for seven years, as some people have been, that is not innocent until proven guilty,” she said. “We need to figure out why it’s taking so long for people to go to trial.”
Gray said that several holding pods are shut down entirely, while many are only halfway full. His particular “tank,” or section of the jail that houses inmates, has 28 to 30 people in it at any given time, although it can hold 40. The tank next door to his has just 20 people in it. He added that he “hates outsourcing as much as anybody,” but it’s currently the only way to handle the load of inmates that the jail is experiencing.
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