When someone is arrested for a crime in McLeod County, everyone pays.
In 2019, it cost county taxpayers about $153.24 per day to keep each inmate housed at McLeod County Jail. During a recent day at the jail, 29 inmates were being kept at a cost of about $4,443 for the day. It's not unusual for the jail to house about that many inmates, bringing potential costs to around $133,000 each month.
Jail administrator Will Feltmann would like to bring that total down by making sure no inmate has a reason to return again. His ally in the cause is Hannah Jerabek, a social worker with McLeod County Health and Human Services. She meets with offenders who are soon to transition back into public life.
"(We) get the ball rolling," she said. "To get them not to come back, basically we want them to re-enter their communities and be upstanding citizens and be part of our communities again."
The needs of inmates soon to be released varies, but resources to assist with housing, transportation, food, health insurance and employment are common requests. Jerabek also helps gather information for chemical assessments, mental health support and other needs mandated by probation rules.
"The people in jail aren't all bad people," Feltmann said. "They have families to go back to and help support. So if we can give them more help going back to their families, they are one step ahead. The county as a whole is one step ahead. They are more supportive members of the community, and that is the main goal."
The program has been running for a little more than a year now, starting when Feltmann took over as administrator in 2018. Public health nurses had been pushing for such a program.
"It was a perfect storm when they said they wanted to do this and they had a social worker in the public health department," Feltmann said.
In addition to her work in the jail, Jerabek reaches out to others for help as putting together assistance for those soon to step back out into society requires numerous puzzle pieces. In addition to aid from Public Health and social workers, CareerForce of Hutchinson pitches in by visiting to teach job and job-seeking skills, and United Community Action Partnership provides information about support programs it administers.
"We try to make relationships in the community and bring those resources to (inmates)," Jerabek said, "where they come make a face-to-face connection at the jail so they have a connection when they get out."
One major hurdle is health insurance. Inmates are cut off from Medicaid when they enter jail and it doesn't pick back up again when they leave. Another hurdle is a lack of job skills and job experience. The sentenced to service work program provides inmates a way to gain work experience while cutting time off their sentence, and Feltmann hopes to grow the program's potential by working with more employers in the county.
"There is a high demand for workers in the county," he said.
Feltmann learned the importance of providing work opportunities when speaking to an inmate.
"I asked if he likes coming back," he said. "And he's like, 'No, but I can go to Social Services and they will give me stuff for food and that's it. But if I go back to dealing drugs, in two hours I will have a roof over my head, a car, food on the table, money in my pocket.' That was eye-opening."
Feltmann and Jerabek know they need to do more. Jerabek maintains connections with landlords willing to work with felons, and with motels willing to provide temporary housing, but the need is larger. She works with UCAP to connect inmates to its housing services, but her limited time to work with the jail program places a cap on how much she can follow up. She is able to dedicate four hours of her 40-hour work week to the program, which means she can meet with about five of about 30 inmates in the jail. And her ability to follow up after inmates are released is similarly limited.
One of the program's success stories started when law enforcement officers realized a homeless man they were booking was in need of assistance. Because he lacked documentation to prove who he was, the man was having a hard time breaking his cycle. A place for him was found at a sober living facility when he told Jerabek he was ready for a change, and he is now employed and helping at the facility.
To try and grow the program's reach, Feltmann and Jerabek are first working to prove its value. They hope that if they can do so, they can make the case for rearranging work duties to give the program more hours, and grow the program without adding a large expense.
"In this first year we're trying to work on gathering more information and statistics," Feltmann said. "We want to get that information for commissioners and for the public to see that it's helping. ... If we can even extend the time between (jail) visits, that's a success."
With more work hours dedicated to the program, Jerabek said, she would hope to have more time to gather ideas and offerings from around the county. She sees aiding with homelessness as an important area of focus, along with growing connections to mental health services.
"Housing is a huge resource McLeod County is lacking," Jerabek said. "There is no homeless shelter, no transitional housing."
People who are homeless are often facing mental health issues as well, which can lead to criminal offenses.
"In this day and age, mental health and jails ... it's a crisis," Feltmann said. "We have people here in a mental health crisis. Hannah can ID that. We are trying more and more to connect to mental health services, to find the right treatments so they can be successful, so they can go back to their communities instead of repeating this cycle."
