New staffing requirements for many county jails across Kentucky are now in effect and the new mandates have some smaller counties scrambling to find funding for extra staffing that will be needed in some facilities.

The new KRS statutes apply to all full-service jails that have 81 or less beds, which includes Clinton and most surrounding counties that are not equipped to house state inmates.

Although the Clinton County Jail apparently complies with the new added staffing regulations at current time, the amount of employees on duty must be maintained in order to keep those smaller facilities open. In some cases, county governments are having to hire extra staff to meet the new requirements, meaning an added expense for those counties to keep their local detention center’s open.

The new KRS statute, 501 KAR 3:040, has been the subject of articles recently in the Tompkinsville News and a topic of discussion at Monroe County Fiscal Court meetings as well as that county tries to determine whether or not it can afford to keep its jail open if they hire additional staff required under the new law.

Under 501 KAR, the following procedures must be adhered to for full-service jails:

Section 1: Staffing (1) A category I jail with eighty (80) beds or less shall provide twenty-four (24) hour awake supervision for all prisoners by providing a minimum of two (2) jail personnel, excluding jail personnel designated for communication.

This basically means that at least three people have to be on duty at each jail around the clock.

In the situation with Monroe County, for example, the jail only employed one supervised employee at all times with an additional person designated as “communication.”

The impact of the new regulation could mean that counties would have to have at least three full-time deputy jailers (one for each eight-hour shift) and additional deputies for weekend shifts. The salary cost, even at minimum wage, would add several thousand dollars to a county’s expenses tomeet the new staffing requirements.

Clinton County Jailer Gene Ferrill could not be reached for comment prior to press deadline Tuesday morning. However, during a discussion on new hires at the November meeting of Clinton Fiscal Court, in which a couple of hires were announced, Ferrill told the court at that time he would need to hire another part-time person at the jail.

Under state statute, only the jailer can hire and fire jail personnel, with the only responsibility of the court being to set the salary for each detention center employee.

Also last week, Clinton County Judge/Executive Lyle Huff said that to his understanding, the staffing at the jail was sufficient to cover the new state mandates, even prior to the new Kentucky Revised Statute taking effect.