Inmates previously moved in 2022 and 2023.
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Oglethorpe County Sheriff David Gabriel speaks to residents concerning safety techniques in the event of an emergency Jan. 21 at St. John's Ame Church. (Sydney Bishop/The Oglethorpe Echo)
Oglethorpe County inmates might move to the new Hart County Jail when it is completed, which would make the judicial process more efficient, Sheriff David Gabriel said.
This would be the third relocation of county inmates since 2022. Inmates were housed at the Oconee County Jail in 2022 and then moved to the Greene County Jail last year.
The Greene County Jail is about 4 miles closer to the Oglethorpe County Sheriff’s Office than the site of the new Hart County Jail, but Hart and Oglethorpe counties are in the Northern Judicial Circuit of the 10th Judicial District of Georgia
“The advantage is that Hart County is in our judicial district,” Gabriel said. “So they can actually do some pretrial motions and stuff like that with their folks. You wouldn’t actually have to bring some people back for court.”
Greene County is in the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit of the Eighth Judicial District of Georgia.
Gabriel’s decision to house inmates outside the county was primarily a financial one. In 2022, he estimated the county saved about $400,000 per year through outsourcing.
Gabriel said he anticipates a continued cost of $35 per inmate per day to house inmates, the rate it paid Oconee County and now pays Greene County.
Hart County Jail administrator David Cleveland quoted a higher price.
“I know that we, ourselves, pay anywhere from $55 to — some counties charge $65,” he said. “We’ll probably try to stay with a reasonable trend.”
Hart County Sheriff Mike Cleveland estimated a slightly lower price at $45-$55 per inmate per day, but he said any process of taking in out-of-town inmates will not begin until his staff becomes acclimated to the new jail.
“We’re going from a 50-man jail to a 260-man jail,” Mike Cleveland said. “It’s quite a transformation.”
He said he expects the new jail, approved for construction in 2022, to open April 30.
“It’d be sometime in June or July before we could start taking inmates,” Mike Cleveland said.