MARION,Indiana – As our readers know, jails are filling up all over the MiBash area. And in Grant County, it is so bad that Grant County dispatch unbelievably told the Marion Police to hold off on unnecessary arrests Sunday due to jail overcrowding.
That request apparently comes on the heels of the MPD making many misdemeanor arrests over the weekend which maxed out the Grant County jail. The good news is that Deputy Chief Stephen Dorsey told local media that if the MPD needed to make an arrest they would still conduct the department’s business.
But Captain Randy Alberston of the Grant County Sheriff Department’s Confinement Division says that while there were many arrests over the weekend, the jail is back to taking inmates. House Bill 1006, which went into effect on January 1st, stated that all level 6 felons who have a 365 day or less sentence must serve their time in local jails instead of being transported to the Department of Corrections. This has sent the population of local jails soaring and Wabash County has just begun housing some sentenced inmates all the way up in the Elkhart County Jail.
The Grant County Jail has a capacity of 274, compared to the 1979-built Wabash County Jail with a capacity of 72. At the May 23 Wabash County Board of Commissioners meeting, Eric Ratts, Principal Architect at Indianapolis-based engineering firm DLZ, presented a jail feasibility study which suggested that Wabash County build a new jail with a 215 inmate capacity. The cost of such a facility ranges from $15.7 to $17 million.