Request By:
Stanton Baker
County Attorney
Carroll County Courthouse
Carrollton, Kentucky 41008
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Elizabeth E. Blackford, Assistant Attorney General
You have written to inquire about permissable uses by the fiscal court of the funds created pursuant to KRS 24A.175(5) in a county that has no county jail. KRS 24A.175(5) provides:
The Circuit Clerk shall, at the time fines and costs are paid over to the state, pay five dollars ($5.00) from each cost collected pursuant to subsection (1) of this section to the county treasurer for use by the fiscal court for the sole purpose of defraying the costs of operation of the county jail.
The fiscal court has a continuing affirmative duty under KRS 67.080 and KRS 67.083 to provide a county jail. OAG 79-587; OAG 79-588, copies enclosed. The duty is not limited merely to the provision of a physical facility, the jail. It also encompasses the duty to perform the service of keeping and housing prisoners. (Note the provisions of KRS 441.030 relating to transfer of prisoners to a secure jail and KRS 441.040 relating to payment where the transfer is rendered necessary by the fact that a county has no jail) . Thus, though the county has no jail, the fiscal court will nonetheless continue to have an affirmative duty to provide for the housing and keeping of prisoners, to operate the jail, as it were, through some alternative means. OAG 79-588.
In recent times funding for the operation of jails and for the keeping and housing of prisoners has been chronically short. It is clear that KRS 24A.175(5) was enacted to allay this shortage and that the funds allotted thereunder were intended to be used to defray all costs associated with performing the duty of operating a jail.
Thus, where there is a jail, the funds may be used to defray the costs of running the physical facility and of keeping and housing prisoners therein. And, where the county does not have a jail, the funds may be used to cover the costs of providing alternative methods of housing and keeping prisoners. 1
With this general proposition in mind, we will proceed to the specific questions you have posed.
1. May the money allotted under KRS 24A.175(5) be used for juvenile detention costs such as the payment of per diem fees to families who keep juveniles or to the Jefferson County Juvenile Detention Center for keeping out of county juveniles?
The funds may be used to defray these expenses insofar as these juveniles could be housed and kept in the county jail if there was one. KRS 208.130; Skeans v. Van Hoose, Ky., 512 S.W.2d 520 (1974).
2. May the money be used to pay the charges made to Carroll County by other counties that house and keep Carroll County prisoners in their jails?
Yes. The costs of this type of alternative housing falls within the ambit of KRS 24A.175(5).
3. May the money be paid to the city of Carrollton to defray the costs of operating the city jail?
You stated that prisoners that would be housed in the Carroll County jail, if it had one, are housed in the Carrollton City jail. The city may charge the county on a cost-sharing percentage or per diem basis for housing the county prisoners, just as one county may charge another for performing like services. See OAG 79-588. The KRS 24A.175(5) fund may be used to pay this charge.
4. May the funds allotted pursuant to KRS 24A.175(5) be used for capital expenditures in connection with constructing a new jail or renovating an old one?
Yes. See OAG 80-448, copy enclosed.
Footnotes
Footnotes
1 In a time in which more and more county jails are being closed any construction of KRS 24A.175(5) limiting the use of the funds allotted thereunder to the operation of the physical facility, a county jail, located in the county, would be absurd. For in those counties that have no jail the fiscal court would have a fund which they could not use and at the same time would be faced with a lack of funds to provide adequately for the housing and keeping of prisoners, the very problem KRS 24A.175 was intended to remedy.