County wants state to pay up on jail costs for housing state prisoners

Talk about it

The St. Croix County Board is asking the state to pay its share for housing prisoners.

People in custody of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections for allegedly violating the requirements of parole or probation are regularly held in county jails awaiting court action.

Wisconsin law requires the DOC to pay counties $40 per person per day, if it has enough money to pay that. If not, payments to the counties are prorated.

Jail administrators say it costs St. Croix County $59 a day to house and feed each prisoner, so the county would be losing money even if the DOC paid the $40.

But it’s not. In 2007 the state reimbursed the county at the rate of $32 per day.

In 2007 the county provided roughly 2,500 days of housing for DOC inmates.

According to county figures, under the statutory reimbursement rate, the county should have gotten over $20,000 more than it got last year, and it received $67,500 less than what it actually cost to house DOC prisoners.

According to the resolution adopted at the April 15 County Board meeting, “The state has continually and knowingly underfunded the (DOC), forcing the taxpayers of St. Croix County to subsidize the state for housing its prisoners…”

Copies of the resolution adopted by the board will be forwarded to the National Association of Counties, the Wisconsin Counties Association, state legislators representing St. Croix County and all Wisconsin county clerks.

Tags: news, stcroixcounty, jail_costs