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Highlands Today

County Jail Looks Everywhere To Trim Costs

Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today

Highlands County Jail inmates prepare trays for lunch including sandwiches, salad and brownies Friday in Sebring.

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By GARY PINNELL

Highlands Today

Published: August 6, 2008

SEBRING - It's always fun to find lost money, and that's what David Paeplow does every day.

Maj. Paeplow is in charge of the Highlands County Jail, where 1,813 inmates were booked from April 1 to June 30, but only 1,665 were released.

One obvious way to save money: charge inmates to stay out of jail. The sheriff's office does that through its Community Maintenance Program.

"They pay a $5 a day fee to come and work," said Paeplow. "Every day they work takes a day off their sentence."

Some inmates - no, Paeplow corrects, these people aren't in jail, so they're "participants"- work at the pistol range. One cleans up around the Avon Park Police Department. Some are at Nu-Hope. Others separate plastic and paper from trash at the Highlands County recycling facility. They're unsupervised, and they wear their own clothes instead of orange jumpsuits.

Other than the paperwork, there's no cost to the system for community maintenance participants, Paeplow said. But here's the good part for the detention commander: it costs about $46 a day to keep an inmate in jail. Community maintenance participants bring their own lunch and go home at night, so the jail saves that $46, times 110 participants every quarter. That's $5,060.

CMPs also saved $83,326 in labor the sheriff's office would have paid for, Paeplow computed, and he's collected $7,680 in fees.

Trustys - inmates - who worked 31,000 hours inside the jail, mopping floors and cooking meals and such saved the jail another $215,019.

Food Savings

During the second quarter of 2008, the jail served 128,983 meals to inmates. Where do they get all that food?

The sheriff's office has a farm near Avon Park that produced 6,574 pounds of produce and 6,160 eggs in the second quarter, Paeplow said in his quarterly detention report. The figures are reproduced in Sheriff Susan Benton's quarterly report.

"We use all the produce. But sometimes, we get too many eggs," Paeplow said. So the Highlands farm manager trades the surplus for more veggies from farm managers at other sheriff's departments. Their most frequent trade partner is Manatee County.

Increasingly, Paeplow buys flour, sugar, coffee and other dry goods in larger bulk - in 50 or 100 pound bags, if possible, instead of 10 or 20 pounds.

In the Polk County Jail, Sheriff Grady Judd stopped serving chocolate milk, fresh milk, coffee, tea or juice to inmates. He figures the menu changes will save about $160,000 a year.

"If you want to eat peanut butter and jelly and drink juice and caffeinated drinks, fine, stay out of jail," Grady said. The Polk County Jail continues to offer three daily meals, about 2,650 calories a day. But serving just water and nonfat dry milk will save $67,175 a year, deputies say. Thin-meat sandwiches instead of peanut butter and jelly saves $11,076 a year.

The Florida Sheriff's Association model jail standards mandate "three substantial, wholesome, and nutritious meals daily." The association's standards don't specifically define what that means.

Medical Costs

In the second quarter, the jail charged inmates $249,204 for medical costs. But only $17,894 was collected.

"One of our biggest expenses is prescription drugs," Paeplow said.

With few exceptions, a new inmate isn't allowed to bring his own pill bottles to jail. "Unless they're sealed from the manufacturer," Paeplow said.

Instead, the in-house doctor - who comes in three times a week - will approve prescriptions, and the jail buys generics, when possible.

"We've established agreements for discounts with outside vendors," Paeplow said.

Inmates were transported 39,746 miles during the past three months. In the old days, inmates who needed an X-ray would be transported to the hospital. At least one armed deputy would go along for the ride.

But these days, with $4 a gallon gasoline, Paeplow looks for ways to save transportation dollars too. So he subcontracted an X-ray tech with a portable X-ray machine who comes to the jail.

"And we get a cheaper rate," Paeplow said.

Three Meals

20052008

$2$1.63

Although food and transportation prices have risen in the past three years, the cost of serving breakfast, lunch and dinner every day to inmates has been shaved to the bare essentials.

Gary Pinnell can be reached at gpinnell@highlandstoday.com or 863 386-5828. The Tampa Tribune contributed to this report.

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