JASPER, Tenn. - For the second month in a row, the Marion County Commission had to approve a budget amendment to cover the skyrocketing medical costs for county inmates.
County Mayor David Jackson announced in March that Marion's budget for inmate healthcare was all but empty with four months left in the fiscal year, and the board had to approve $131,000 from its general fund to cover the overage.
At the board's April meeting, he said inmates racked up $149,600 in healthcare costs in the last month.
Marion has spent nearly $700,000 on inmate medical care so far during this fiscal year.
"It's a tough pill to swallow to have to do this," Jackson said.
County officials are working to find solutions, he said, and some meetings on the topic are scheduled next week.
After Commission Chairman Gene Hargis did some further research into the matter, Jackson said it was determined Marion is "pretty much stuck" with its current inmate healthcare cost predicament.
"We may need to buy all these deputies a stethoscope and give [offenders] a physical before they arrest them," Commissioner Tommy Thompson joked.
Commissioner David Abbott asked if the county was utilizing ankle monitors for some convicts.
"Not enough of them it don't look like," Commissioner Donald Blansett replied.
Hargis, who is also a detective for the Marion County Sheriff's Department, called that a "double-edged sword."
"You start turning them out and putting them on bracelets, and they butcher somebody up or walk in a church and kill 10 people," he said. "I don't know what the answer is, but turning them out and putting a bracelet on and asking them to behave is definitely not the answer to it."
Abbott asked if the situation Hargis described had ever happened in Marion.
"It can happen anywhere," Hargis said.
Releasing even low-risk offenders is a gamble, he said.
Blansett said sooner or later the board would have to address the growing problem.
"We're not doing enough to make sure the [inmates] that do have insurance - that we're taking it from them," he said. "I don't know what that takes to get done. I guess when we bankrupt the county."
When inmates are given a physical at the jail, Jackson said screeners have been instructed to "start asking that question" regarding whether the inmates have their own medical insurance.
Gene HargisFor the past several months, Hargis said the county made it mandatory also for the booking jailer at the Marion Justice Center to ask about health insurance and search for documentation.
"That's being done," he said. "Now, have we had a chance to use it? No, not yet."
Blansett estimated Marion could probably save between 20 or 30 percent of its current inmate medical care costs just by filing claims through prisoners' own insurance plans.
"We need to get a system," he said. "Somebody needs to get a system to find out if they don't have [insurance]. If they don't have it, that's fine, but we want the answer."
Commissioner Mack Reeves agreed and said Marion has to find a way to cut inmate healthcare costs because the county is on pace to spend almost $2 million on that next year.
"I'm sorry, but I don't believe that the good, honest people ought to have to take care of this bunch," he said. "I think we've had a breakdown. We can't continue spending $2 million a year on prisoners. Somehow we've got to get a grasp on this."
Reeves said the matter should be a "priority" issue in the county.
"It's not an easy answer," Hargis said. "It's something that we definitely need to work on."
Ryan Lewis is based in Marion County. Contact him at ryanlewis34@gmail.com.