Q: What are the detailed daily expenditures for the Cherokee County Adult Detention Center ?
—Ed Moser, Woodstock
A: The inmate housing cost per day is calculated by taking the facility's overall budget and dividing it by the design capacity (512 inmates), then by 365 (days a year), Marianne Kelley, spokeswoman for the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office, told Q&A on the News.
For fiscal year 2017, it cost $70.92 per day to house each inmate in the detention center, with the bulk of those costs attributed to salaries and benefits for the center employees.
Kelley said the facility budgeted $9.3 million for employee salaries and benefits for fiscal 2017, which using the formula comes to $49.79, per person, per day.
The operating budget for the inmate housing is $3.95 million, which Kelley said comes to $21.13 per inmate, per day. This figure, added to $49.79, comes to the reported daily figure of $70.92.
Here is a breakdown, obtained from Kelley, of some of the largest costs in the facility’s daily operating budget during fiscal 2017:
- Inmate medical services, budgeted at $2.04 million, equal $10.94 a day per inmate.
- Food costs of $600,000 are $3.21 per day.
- Electricity is budgeted at $515,266, or $2.76 per day.
- Water and sewer costs are at $183,152, or 98 cents a day.
- Facility repairs and maintenance are budgeted to $108,000, with 58 cents spent a day.
- Travel for inmate extraditions are budgeted at $90,823, equal to 49 cents a day.
Fast Copy News Service wrote this column; Joe Youorski contributed. Do you have a question? We’ll try to get the answer. Call 404-222-2002 or email q&a@ajc.com (include name, phone and city).
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