FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The Washington County Jail has seen a recent spike in COVID-19 cases. Over 40 inmates have tested positive. The number was at 0 a few weeks ago.
Washington County Sheriff Jay Cantrell said this is a result of overcrowding.
“We know that COVID is very contagious. We're in a congregated setting, people are tightly packed together, and so to find a place for COVID, to spread its wings and move around and infect people once it comes in” said Cantrell.
The jail should only be operating to 580 to 600 inmates. But right now, they’re 200 over that number. They are also struggling with staffing, according to Cantrell.
“We're shorthanded. We are struggling to fill our ranks. We're about 30 people short, working in the jail.” Cantrell said. “Whether you're sick, or whether you're not, our deputies still have to go in there and take care of those people.”
Cantrell has been working on a project to better handle COVID-19 and other illness outbreaks in the jail.
“We had asked the Quorum Court for some money to build a what we call a COVID expansion or communicable disease expansion area. We never even thought about COVID, or some of these things that are that we're seeing these days, and the separation that it requires,” said Cantrell.
The project would include smaller quarantine areas for sick inmates, as well as other advancements to the jail.
“If somebody is infected or test positive, we need to get those people out and get them into a smaller area so that we don't have five or six people taken up 16, 24 bed cellblock, and nobody else can go in there, because nobody else is positive” said Cantrell.
The Quorum Court approved $18 million for the project, but bids came in for more than $7 million above estimates.
They are now thinking about scaling back the project, according to Cantrell. This could be decreasing beds or the scope of the project.
“We're trying to figure out how to utilize those funds that that were set aside for us in the best manner and get the biggest bang for our buck” said Cantrell.
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