By Adam Gaub | Casa Grande Dispatch
A pair of contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service permit that agency to stash prisoners at the Pinal County Youth Justice Center and pay Pinal County significantly less money than it pays neighboring counties to house prisoners.
While the amount of money the county loses out on is difficult to determine, due to minimum staffing and operation requirements for the facility, County Manager Fritz Behring said the U.S. Marshals pay less than half of what the agency pays Gila County for the same detention services.
Pinal County has two contracts with the Marshals Service. One is a 30-year deal for $60 per day that was signed in 1992. A 15-year deal, that ends next May, calls for paying $80 per day. Gila County collects $134 per day from the U.S. Marshals for the same services. Pima County is in the midst of negotiations to set a base rate at $250 that would escalate to $325 per day for inmates held at the facility longer than 30 days.
“It should be no surprise that the fee is (still) that low, because we can’t get out of this thing,” Behring said Monday. “Only a fool would sign something like this.”
