The “Hub City” has lived up to its moniker, serving as a centralized location for nearby counties to send jail inmates when those local jails become overcrowded.
Sheriff Kelly Rowe said the Lubbock County Detention Center was housing 15 inmates for another county on the South Plains, after noting contracts were recently renewed between Lubbock and other counties in the area.
“We’re in the situation today where we can actually provide greater support to those jurisdictions if they are peeking out with regard to their total capacity. Much like we were having to do 10 and 15 years ago when we were overcrowded,” Rowe said.
“We have a significant number of one county’s inmates that’s had to close their facility to do some repair work and get some things into compliance,” he explained.
The Lamb County Sheriff’s Office reported 4 inmates being housed outside of Lamb County between February 19-26 due to overpopulation. During that period, 48 inmates were housed in the Lamb County Jail. That is about 4 percent of the Lubbock County Detention Center’s population, which Rowe said was 1,185 on Friday.
“Has run somewhere in between 1,100 and 1,200 on any given day. We had one summer where we peaked at a little over 1,400, but for the most part that was a short-term period time, and came back down to what we consider our normal numbers,” Rowe said.
Rowe said an average of about 65 inmates are booked in daily and 65 inmates are processed out each day.
“We book just under 20,000 a year into the facility,” he added.
“One thing we pay close attention to his what’s the average length of stay of an individual coming into the facility,” Rowe said, explaining that inmates with mental health concerns tend to stay longer than other inmates.
“Those individuals on average will tend to stay in the county jail 4 to 7 times longer than any other average inmate,” he said.
Drug offenses have also increased Lubbock’s jail population recently, according to Rowe.
“60% of the jail population right now out of the Lubbock County Detention Center, 60% are in on an addictive related offense. Although they may not be charged with the manufacture or delivery or possession of a controlled substance, they’re in for the burglary, the robbery, or the theft that they did to support the habit,” he said.
“First and foremost you have to look at your total community population. As it grows so will your jail population, that goes without saying,” he added.
Rowe said he would be traveling to Colorado in the next several weeks to meet with other law enforcement agencies as part of an ongoing discussion on population management in jails across the country.