Intensive outpatient drug treatment program going ‘really well;’ Jailer hopes to double enrollment in April

The Boyle County Detention Center has eased its overcrowding problem enough that it no longer needs to house local inmates in Casey County.

Jailer Barry Harmon said Tuesday morning that four local inmates remained at Casey County, but they were scheduled to return to Boyle that day. Boyle County will be sending four state inmates to Casey County in exchange, so neither jail’s population numbers will be affected by the transfers but all of Boyle County’s inmates will once again be in-house, Harmon said.

The jail has converted a female dorm into a male dorm in order to ease the strain of using the indoor recreation area to house inmates that cannot fit in cells, Harmon said. As of Tuesday morning, the jail population was low enough at 367 and there were enough beds for male inmates that no one was being housed in the indoor recreation area, he said.

“How close is it to start having to put them back in? We don’t know; it just depends on the cell population,” Harmon said.

There are currently 20 inmates who have been released through the jail’s new intensive outpatient drug treatment program, run by third-party company Shepherd’s House out of the old Red Cross building on Third Street.

Another 20 can hopefully be added to that program April 1, further easing the recent strain on the jail, Harmon said.

“It’s going really well,” Harmon said of the outpatient program. “Those we thought that would leave in four hours are turning out to be the shining stars, the poster child for the program. I’m excited about that. It’s unreal.”

One of the participants has a full-time job as a carpenter in Lexington and “he shows up at six o’clock in the evening and stays ’til nine in the program and we’ve not had an issue once,” Harmon said. “… And that’s just one example.”

If things continue to go well after growing the program to 40 inmates, the program could expand again to 60 in May, Harmon said.

“Then Jerod Thomas, director of Shepherd’s House will evaluate and see really how many more clientele can be handled there by them.”