The number of inmates currently in the Geary County jail has reached record highs.
Last week there were well over 160 people jailed according to Geary County Commissioner Florence Whitebread.
The jail populations were amongst one of the topics discussed at today’s Geary County Commission meeting.
“I don’t know what’s creating such a big influ
x in our jail, but this is more people than we’ve had in jail at anytime around here, so it’s surprising,” said Whitebread.
Geary County Sheriff Tony Wolf says there is an “ebb and flow with the number of folks we’ll have in our jail…but lately, we’ve been staying consistently high.”
“The agressive stance that we have against the criminal element [out here] has something to do with it, I’m sure; just the old-fashioned police work that we’re doing is a cause for the numbers to go up,” said Wolf.
Another factor into the abnormally high jail population is the absence of the Municipal court for the past week.
“The Municipal Court has been on recess for the last week or so; so that’s caused a back-up there ,” said Wolf who noted that once they get back running, “we’ll see the numbers drop quite a bit.”
Sheriff Wolf says that the crime rate is up in our area but still much lower than other cities across the country.
“With the Sheriff’s Department, we agressively pursue the criminal element and if we catch them we bring them in [to jail] and that’s how this whole thing works,” said Wolf.