NASHVILLE-Tennessee would accelerate the release of some felons from state prisons as well as cut payments to Hamilton County and some other counties that house state prisoners under a budget-cutting plan presented Tuesday by the state’s prisons chief.
Correction Department Commissioner Derrick D. Schofield told Gov. Bill Haslam, who took office Jan. 15, that the plan would satisfy directives to departments to prepare cuts of 1 to 3 percent.
The 3 percent plan calls for cutting payments to local jails from $35 to $32 per prisoner per day. Schofield said, “This is one where we all kind of share the pain.”
“It’s tough for everybody,” said Schofield, whom Haslam lured away from Georgia where he served as an assistant corrections commissioner and chief of staff. “Naturally, counties will say, ‘No we can’t do it.'”
The proposal would cut $3.3 million in payments to the 66 local jails that do not have state contracts. The department would have to cut its budget by $12 million under the 3 percent scenario.