From numbers around 160 to numbers as low as 112, the inmate population in Geary County has slowly decreased.

Tony Wolf, Geary County Sheriff, said that the decrease in population is just an ebb and flow.

“I’ve seen, over the many years that I’ve been there, the jail population will have a lot of folks in there for a while and then it’ll come back down and then you won’t have a lot of folks in there for a while – it’s like the tides,” said Wolf.

Reports to the County Commission have indicated a steady decrease in the inmate totals in recent weeks.

“If someone gets arrested, most of the time most of the crimes have a bond that they can actually bond out; sometimes the crime does not have a bond – it depends on what crime is committed,” said Wolf. “The folks that don’t bond out, that end up staying with us, those are the ones that go into general population and then they go on the [inmate] numbers and stay with us for more than just a day.”

There is no pinpoint reason for the decline, other than to say the overall criminal element is decreasing in Geary County.

“It’s a revolving door there at the Sheriff’s office, and at the jail; there’s a lot of folks that come in/come through there, we have our frequent flyers that are in [jail] seems like all the time, but then there’s the ones that come in that we’ve never seen before – but they’re still coming and going,” said Wolf.

Junction City Police Chief Dan Breci also noted a seven percent decrease in crime in the first two months of 2017.

Factors contributing to the decrease in crime and thus the jail population as well are varied, but likely boil down to good old fashioned policing and the hard work of local law enforcement.