By Lindsay Welbers Princeton Reporter PRINCETONThe Bureau County Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee took a look Tuesday night

at what the county would need to do if the jail were eliminated all together. The numbers are still in the works, committee co-chair Rick Wilkin said and the BCCJCC will present the county board with all of their findings at once probably in April. (These are) the assumptions that will be used to determine the hard costs that will be presented to the board in regards to not having a jail facility, Wilkin said. Wilkin hopes that the figures will be available in April for a special county board meeting where the BCCJCC will present the financial estimates for the jail. The options that are being looked at include replacing the jail on the current site, building a new jail in a new space, building a law and justice center along with a new jail and having no jail at all. Dennis Kimme & Assoc. has been hired as a consultant and will present the cost estimates on the first three options at the special county board meeting. The fourth option, having no jail at all, was something Wilkin calculated based on costs for the last 10 years. On the record I will say there is a reason that counties have their own facilities and do not rent beds in other facilities, Wilkin said. If the current jail were closed, the county would have to pay neighboring counties to house inmates. Additionally the cost to transport inmates would likely skyrocket, the county would have to find another place to keep the sheriffs department and there would still need to be some sort of holding facility for those arrested in Bureau County. A lot of the logistics things could be worked out, committee co-chair Joe Bertetto said. They kind of seem insurmountable but if this were an option that the board wanted to do the sheriffs department, the courts, probation and everybody involved would have to really hammer this thing out. The lifespan of a jail is about 30 years, Wilkin and Bertetto both said. So the financial estimates extend out only that far and all will likely increase significantly from where they are today. The cost that Bureau County would have to pay another to house an inmate today is $60 per day and the nearest facility, in LaSalle County, is roughly 30 miles one way. Sheriffs deputies would make two trips per day, in 8 passenger vans, to those other facilities bring inmates to and from court dates in Bureau County. Wilkin estimated that the staff to bring inmates to and fro would probably be 10 people, whereas the current jail currently employs 9 people. States Attorney Pat Herrmann recommended that it would be safest to estimate the need to bring inmates in twice a day, six days a week, because the courts tend to do things at the very last minute and every arrestee needs to be arraigned within 48 hours. I suppose its a matter of manpower cost at that point, Herrmann said. You can pay transportation costs by taking more than one trip or you can pay manpower costs for watching them but so many things happen spontaneously.

Arrestees who will eventually be housed still need to be held somewhere before heading straight to the facility that will house them, Bertetto said. So regardless it seems likely that the current jail would need to be renovated somewhat. Also, towns in Bureau County without their own jail bring their arrestees to the Bureau County Jail so those towns would need to either build their own jails or rent beds in neighboring counties as well. We could spend all day what-iffing this to death, Bertetto said. A hard and fast bottom line number wasnt presented to the committee Tuesday night. Lindsay Welbers can be reached at (815)872-1069 Ext. 13 or ntprinceton@ivnet.com.