Jail Statistics

Food Service

The jail has a service level agreement with Consolidated Food Services (CFS) to provide inmate meals, lunch bags for work release inmates, and snacks for inmates with special medical needs, such as diabetes and pregnancy.  In 2005 CFS provided 332,712 breakfasts, 343,964 lunches, 360,716 suppers, 16,828 snacks, and 12,258 lunch bags for a total cost of $1,992,340 ($1.88 per meal).  CFS is located just outside of Verona, Wisconsin, and the meals are trucked to the facilities and distributed.  Jail meals comprise approximately 84 percent of the meals prepared daily by CFS.  Inmates are served a cold lunch 7 days a week.  Hot meals are provided 7 nights a week.  Meetings are held monthly with CFS to discuss issues, quality of food/services, and budgetary concerns.

Laundry

The jail contracts with Madison United Health Linens (MUHL) for laundry services.  All jail bedding, linens, and uniforms are exchanged several times a week.  MUHL launders approximately 500,000 pounds annually.  Additionally, inmate workers collect personal laundry for non-sentenced inmates and launder those items in-house. 

The jail contracts with CoinMach for maintenance and rental of the washers and dryers inside the facilities that are used by sentenced inmates for their personal laundry.

Commissary/Vending

Swanson Inmate Commissary Services and Swanson Vending contract with the Dane County Jail to provide commissary and vending services to inmates.  Available items to purchase include hygiene products, over the counter medications, soda, snacks and candies, stationery items, and clothing.  In 2005 over $750,000 worth of product was sold to inmates.

Inmate Telephones

The jail contracts with Inmate Calling Solutions (ICS) for the inmate telephone system.  In 2005, inmates made 1,550,293 call attempts for a total of 2,842,485 minutes.  Dane County receives a commission based on the telephone usage.  There are 166 inmate telephones throughout the jail. 

Security Services Staffing

The jail is staffed with 239.5 FTEs, 177 are sworn and 62.5 are non-sworn staff.  There are a total of 158 deputy positions, 19 sworn supervisors, 1 non –sworn supervisor, and 47 non-sworn staff who handle data entry, property inventory, control security systems, etc.  In addition there are 3 administrative staff to handle inmate funds, Huber accounts and mail.  The jail uses an objective classification system to determine appropriate housing for inmates based on institutional behavior and severity of charges.  Additionally these 6 classification and hearing specialists conduct disciplinary hearings when inmates have violated jail rules.  There are 4 social workers that operate the Job Center and assist inmates with job search, and setting up Huber and work release.  The jail has a contract compliance officer to oversee the comprehensive contracts with our providers, and a half time volunteer service coordinator who oversees the Inmate Volunteer Program. 

Population

The Jail Custody Status Report[2] shows the average breakdown of inmates, housing, custody status and demographics on the jail population for 2005, resulting in an average daily population of 1,007.  There were 16,749 bookings, averaging 322 per week, and 16,878 releases, for an average of 324 per week. 

Total inmate bed days were 367,515.  Peak population for 2005 was achieved on October 30, with 1,103 inmates.  Due to limited bed space, Dane County inmates were housed in other county jails for a total of 34,803 bed days at a cost of $1,981,166.[3] 

Bookings

Males account for 77% of the bookings in 2005.  This is a 4% decrease from 2003.

Male and female arrests are broken down by race as shown in the following two charts.

Releases

An in-depth look at the numbers of inmates released from the jail shows that more than half, 52%, are released by day 3.  Inmates released between day 4 and day 10 amounted to 22% of all releases.  This means that nearly three-quarters of all inmates booked during the year were incarcerated for 10 days or less.

Custody Status

A closer breakdown of bookings by custody status shows that slightly over half of the jail bookings were for inmates in a pretrial status. 

The comparison overall of sentenced vs. unsentenced shows that 56.7% of all bookings are for unsentenced inmates, 20.7% are for sentenced, and 22.5% are for other kinds of bookings, i.e., federal inmates, inmates intransit, etc. 

Probation and Parole and the U.S. Marshal’s Office have been encouraged to limit their inmates.  Over the past three years, the ADP for this group of bookings has decreased by 45 inmates a day – a 23% decrease.

Arrests

The City of Madison and the Dane County Sheriff’s Office continue as the most prolific in terms of arrests. 

Dane County had a total of 5,943 arrests, with 72% white and 27% black, comprising 35% of the total arrests.  Madison is the highest user of the jail with 6,173 arrests—53% white and 45% black.

Other Municipalities, which are comprised of towns and villages, had 1,107 arrests of which 85% were white and 13% were black.  Other Cities, such as Fitchburg, Middleton, Sun Prairie, etc., had 12% of the total arrests (1,951) with a breakdown of race of 59% white, 40% black.  All Other, which includes Probation/Parole and federal inmates, totaled 1,592 arrests with 61% being white and 34% black.

Marital Status

The overwhelming majority of inmates are single, with 63% being white and 35% black.

Average Daily Population (ADP)

The 2005 ADP was 1007, a 4.6% decrease from 2004 (1056), a difference of 49.  This decrease is mainly due to the drop in ADP for Probation/Parole and federal inmates, (45).

This chart shows the average daily population for 2005 by month broken down by facility.  The jail has managed the maximum-security population by shipping inmates during peak population times. 

Housing

The Dane County Jail System utilizes a behavior-based classification system.  Factors such as past institutional behavior, severity of charges, and court status, etc. are evaluated by Hearing and Classification Specialists.  All post-arraignment inmates are classified and then placed in a housing unit appropriate for the classification. 

Inmates who come into jail under the influence of alcohol or other drugs are placed in a special review area before they are moved to regular housing.  This review involves medical assessment, mental health assessment, and detoxification if needed. 

Because of limited maximum-security space, the Jail has found it necessary to “push down” inmates to the PSB Jail (medium security).  The following charts show the percentage of inmates by institutional classification.

The breakdown by gender and race is shown in the next two graphs.

A key component affecting housing is peak populations.  The lowest total population for the jail in 2005, including inmates housed in other counties was 857.  The peak occurred in October with 1,051 inmates. 

 Jail Incidents

The jail manages inmates through a variety of ways.  Classification for proper housing is one way; privileges, such as television, commissary, and telephone access are others.  In order to maintain a safe and secure correctional facility, the jail has rules that are issued to every person booked into the jail who will be put in a housing unit.  There is a due process in place to handle violations of the rules.  Minor rule infractions are handled by deputies and can consist of restrictions of privileges and change in housing for no more than 24 hours.  Major rule infractions require a disciplinary hearing for due process.  A Classification/Hearing Specialist conducts the hearing.  The inmate is allowed to tell his/her side of the story.  The inmate may also have an advocate present to assist if there are special needs, or to observe the process to ensure it is fair and objective.  The inmate does not have a right to counsel.

In addition to discipline incidents, the jail experiences other situations requiring a police response.  Following is a breakdown of the 7,646 jail incidents reported in 2005.

Shipping/Boarding Inmates

Due to the continued overcrowding of maximum-security space, Dane County inmates were shipped to 12 different county jails in 2005—Brown, Clark, Columbia, Jefferson, Juneau, Lafayette, Marquette, Ozaukee, Sauk, Walworth, Waupaca and Waushara. In addition to the county jails we also utilized Oakhill Correctional over the Halloween weekend. The highest number of inmates housed in other locations was 193 in preparation for Halloween.

The highest number of inmates housed out of county unrelated to any special event was 177 on October 6^th. The ADP for inmates housed out of county in 2005 was 95.

Estimated 2005 out of county inmate housing costs due to jail overcrowding:

A total of 1130 inmates were shipped to other counties, and 1056 inmates were conveyed from other counties back to Dane County in 2005.  Deputies traveled a total of 54,965 miles, completing 574 conveyances due to overcrowding.  Of these trips, 191 took inmates to other counties, and 383 were to bring the inmates back to Dane County for court or release. The conveyances for overcrowding required 1160.5 deputy hours of regular time and 1612 hours of overtime.

Inmate Funds

In 2005, the long-awaited cash accounting system was implemented.  The system is a module of our records management system, reducing duplicate data entry.  It automatically computes the Huber board charged each inmate.  It accounts for multiple cash drawers, deposits, disbursing cash and checks, and has a full checkbook reconciliation function. 

The total bails, fines, and warrant fees collected in 2005 were $2,555,038.  Dane County received the highest amount of bail, $2,332,884.  The Dane County Clerk of Courts sends unpaid fines to a collection agency.  As a result, there is very little money collected by the jail for fines - $1,728. 

The jail handled 2,225 transactions for Madison Municipal Court, of which 954 were payments of fines totaling $160,917. 

Inmates with work release are required by statute to pay a portion of their costs of incarceration.  Approximately $706,152 was collected in 2005. 

In all, the jail handled over $3.2 million in inmate funds, bail, and Huber board during 2005.