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St. Lawrence County jail in Canton running short on space as court backlogs get cleared

Posted 7/25/21

BY JIMMY LAWTON North Country This Week CANTON — St. Lawrence County’s jail is running out of space as courts have started clearing backlogs and COVID-19 restrictions have eased. St. Lawrence …

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St. Lawrence County jail in Canton running short on space as court backlogs get cleared

Posted

BY JIMMY LAWTON
North Country This Week

CANTON — St. Lawrence County’s jail is running out of space as courts have started clearing backlogs and COVID-19 restrictions have eased.

St. Lawrence County Legislator David Forsythe asked for an update on inmate numbers at the July 19 SLC Operations Committee meeting.

St. Lawrence County Sheriff Brooks Bigwarfe said the jail population was 123 and “growing quickly.”

He told the committee that there were seven new inmates in one day the previous week.

“At this rate I daresay we may be housing out in a couple months, but we’ll see where we are at,” he said.

Bigwarfe said there has been a “definite uptick” and that he knew there would.

The jail technically has a capacity for 164 inmates or 186 inmates when authorized for double cells, by the state. 

However, as some populations have to be separated due to age or other purposes as mandated by the state, not all units can be used to house inmates in some cases.

Bigwarfe said that 11 female inmates must be housed separately from males and they are in a pod of 30 beds. That leaves 19 beds that are available for women only.

He also explained that a 30 bed pod is reserved for COVID-19 quarantine and separation. He said while the jail has no COVID cases that pod is used for new inmates who must quarantine for 14 days before moving into the general population.

While recent bail reforms passed by state officials were expected to reduce jail populations, backlogs created by the pandemic have caused lulls and spikes in inmate numbers.

If the inmate population continues to increase things could get expensive for the county. Bigwarfe said the county pays as much as $100 per day, per inmate when they are held by other facilities, which is nearly five times the cost of housing them at the county’s facility. He said there are also transportation and other costs incurred when shipping inmates out of the county.

“If you’re paying $100 per day and you ship out 10 inmates you’re looking at $30,000 a month,” he said. 

Bigwarfe said on his last review nearly 70 percent of St. Lawrence County’s jail population was there for drug related crimes. He said the number is staggering and unfortunate, but that his department and other police agencies are working to combat the drug problem.

The county was facing a similar problem in October of 2020 when the county was at 118 inmates.

At that time courts had been shut down for about six to eight months and opened back up in August of 2020 prompting a spike in inmates.